[HN Gopher] PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state's age veri...
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PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state's age verification law
Author : LordAtlas
Score : 338 points
Date : 2023-05-02 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kslnewsradio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kslnewsradio.com)
| Pxtl wrote:
| Note: You can get married at 16 in Utah. So you can be married
| but still too young to consume pornography.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Interesting to find out that Utah DOESN'T have the kind of
| child marriage that places like West Virginia have been in the
| news recently for defending.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| As long as the average age of all of your wives is above 18
| it's ok, right?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives
| bick_nyers wrote:
| Feature is working as intended.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| There are already federal regulations around this.
|
| No online entity is legally able to provide minors access to
| pornography. It is just the nation, as a collective, doesn't care
| enough to enforce it.
|
| Employing privacy eroding laws to address it via appeals to
| emotion seems like a slippery slope.
| honkycat wrote:
| Personally, I don't think children should be watching pornography
| ( I know, hot take! )
|
| However, nanny-laws like this suck and end up having a horrible
| blast radius for privacy and security.
|
| What happened to parents setting up content filters on cellphones
| and computers? Why is it the government's job to police your
| kids?
|
| I can't believe how far Hacker News has fallen. Now we're cool
| with de-anonymizing the internet? Ludicrous!
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Good.
| cjmcqueen wrote:
| Why is it that the people following the news hosted by a company
| focused on entrepreneurship and start-ups is surprised and
| arguing how weird a region is? All markets are weird in their own
| way.
|
| It sounds like there's an opportunity here for someone to create
| (yet another?) tech company that manages this difficult problem.
| PornHub, gambling sites and other folks that need to verify age
| then pay you to do it! Laws like this are just a cost of doing
| business. Pass the cost of verification onto the consumers in
| Utah. If consumers don't like they can change the law or learn
| how to setup a VPN.
|
| Doesn't this solve the problem? PornHub keeps their margins and
| people still have their freedom. If a kid really wants to look at
| porn, they'll at least have to be able to fund it or learn some
| valuable technical skills.
| Eumenes wrote:
| [flagged]
| jackmott42 wrote:
| I imagine this is something that has been studied extensively,
| what good/bad o outcomes are known from societies that do/don't
| allow porn?
| threeseed wrote:
| I imagine it's hard to study since you need to find two
| countries with similar socio-economic status, rights of
| women, attitudes towards marriage, rape etc but that have
| opposite opinions on pornography.
| Arnt wrote:
| If the countries are more similar, the results have higher
| precision. If less, then lower precision.
|
| Such things have been done. I remember a study discussed on
| HN where they used the same neighbourhoods before/after a
| change of law. That wasn't porn though, I think it was
| strip clubs, and the result was something like "when a
| strip club opens in an area that had none before, the
| number of sexual assaults in the vicinity decreases by a
| few per cent".
| myrryr wrote:
| The point is the banning of porn is part of the mess which
| is around socio-economic status, rights of women, attitudes
| towards marriage, rape etc.
|
| It is ok to not have to differentiate them, since mostly
| you are after a correlation between the different
| underlaying attitudes.
|
| The banning of porn is a symptom - it is a sign of the
| attitudes, and you can EASILY test against that.
| salemh wrote:
| [dead]
| FrankyZunim wrote:
| [flagged]
| ben_w wrote:
| From the stats I've seen, the only recent change to
| transgender rates is female-to-male, which is the exact
| opposite of autogynephilia, increasing.
|
| Also, the absolute numbers are tiny, so it's not an
| "epidemic" by any measure.
|
| If you'd just focused on addiction and escalation of
| weirdness, you might have a point. Possibly. Not my field,
| but it's at least not as implausible as your chosen bug-
| bear.
| marcofiset wrote:
| Everybody knows that prohibition does not work. People will get
| their fix any other way.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Okay, lets not ban guns or tobacco products then. People will
| get their fix other ways I guess.
| marcofiset wrote:
| Pretty much. Controlling how those products are sold is
| better than outright banning them.
| squarefoot wrote:
| It's astonishing that we must repeat again and again that
| when alcohol was prohibited, it was sold anyway under the
| counter, and among those profiting from that black market
| were Al Capone and other similarly nice people.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Plus a bunch of people actually died from low quality or
| incorrectly manufactured alcohol (that isn't even a
| reference to when the government intentionally poisoned
| some). We're seeing the same problem today with fentanyl
| getting into other illegal drugs.
|
| Pornographic content also has an analog: If companies need
| to be illegitimate to provide it, then they won't be quite
| as picky about if the content itself was produced legally
| or illegally (e.g. CP and other abuse/sex trafficked
| originating content).
|
| Banning pornography won't make it go away, it will just
| make it unregulated.
| nojonestownpls wrote:
| _Some_ people will have their fix anyway, while others will
| find that the friction starts to change their habits away
| from it. Unless you believe access friction has no
| psychological impact at all.
|
| And the friction is going to be especially impactful if
| you're a young teen and haven't been hooked into it as a
| habit yet.
|
| I speak partially from experience, as someone from a country
| with a lot of porn blocked. It was super annoying at first,
| but I just (mostly subconsciously) shifted to written erotica
| and other forms of erotic media. Sexual need is of course a
| deep seated human need, but porn is hardly the only way to
| deal with it, and in fact is one of the least healthy ways.
| There's a lot of f'ed up erotica out there, but in the end
| it's still much easier to see the characters as people and
| remember that sex happens in the larger context of life.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > Some people will have their fix anyway, while others will
| find that the friction starts to change their habits away
| from it.
|
| Yeah, I think people forget in these discussions how costs
| work. Making drug / alcohol / pornography usage illegal
| increases the costs involved, and these cost increases will
| reduce demand for at least some consumers.
|
| For example, I can't smoke weed because then I can't get
| Adderall. That's a kind of local prohibition. I could go to
| the black market for both weed _and_ Adderall but I 'm not
| going to do that, so prohibition has worked here.
| gainda wrote:
| Society has many scourges and history seems to prove that
| prohibition is not the answer
| Eumenes wrote:
| Porn, social media, online dating, toxic streamers, children
| having untethered access to perverse information ... yes,
| prohibition isn't the answer, we need more of these amazing
| things - that'll certainly lead to better outcomes of
| wellbeing
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| Hahaha yeah right, how is porn a scourge on society, it is a
| niche art that a minority of people engage in, at most a right
| of passage for teenagers to watch when they stumble across it.
| Although these days probably not as hard as in vhs times. There
| are far bigger things to worry about than the social impact of
| people engaging in consensual sexual activity for the film and
| magazine.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Did you just refer to porn as a niche art or right of passage
| for children? Yikes.
| salemh wrote:
| [dead]
| salemh wrote:
| [dead]
| hgsgm wrote:
| I was everyone hired porn stars to perform their disingenuous PR
| talking points. At least they'd look nice.
| roschdal wrote:
| In related news: The population of Salt Lake City experiences a
| boost in happiness, productivity and population.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Or people just click the next site that shows up on Google and
| nothing changes.
| theclansman wrote:
| Just the fact that pornography is being taken seriously as
| something that's dangerous for minors is a good thing really.
| marcod wrote:
| Forgot who said it, but every 12 year old with their
| unrestricted iPhone has 24/7 access to Bukakke.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Porn is not dangerous, it is just parents that don't want to
| talk about sex with their kids.
|
| What is dangerous is social media, which should be banned < 21.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Pornography is dangerous. It's extremely addictive and users
| become increasingly tolerant to what their viewing, often
| leading to the development of distressing fetishes or real
| life intimacy issues.
|
| I'm sex positive and I believe in being open with children
| about the realities of life but the dangers of pornography
| are real.
| juve1996 wrote:
| > It's extremely addictive and users become increasingly
| tolerant to what their viewing, often leading to the
| development of distressing fetishes or real life intimacy
| issues.
|
| This is a strong claim - please provide a source. I think
| it may be true, but is it?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The Wikipedia page for pornography addiction lists
| several good sources:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_addiction
|
| And YourBrainOnPorn gathered together some of the
| literature about escalation:
| https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nl/relevant-research-and-
| art...
| laserlight wrote:
| Here's the first sentence of the Wikipedia article:
|
| > Pornography addiction is the popular but
| unscientific[5] application of an addiction model to the
| use of pornography.
|
| [5] Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You
| Should, Too.
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-
| stray/2018...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Yes, I read the article and the sentences which followed
| the first. I was referring you to the references below
| it.
|
| See this comment about the difficulty of getting
| pornography addiction recognised in the DSM:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35790536
|
| It's more of an issue of classifying it separately from
| other sexual disorders than recognising the addictive
| potential of pornography itself.
|
| I myself have been addicted to pornography so I
| understand the reality of it intimately. I have been in
| groups with other men who are distraught with their lack
| of control. I have spoken to countless women whose
| relationships have been destroyed by this.
|
| I can point you towards some large support groups online
| if you'd like to inform the men who are suffering that
| their issue is not scientifically recognised.
|
| By the way, did you have anything to say about the other
| point I made? It wasn't clear which point the grandparent
| was finding questionable.
| erenyeager wrote:
| Thanks for recognizing this problem, really online
| support groups helped so much when it seemed so much of
| common society didn't know or care about these issues.
| Aachen wrote:
| When you use the word "extremely", what kind of incidence
| are you referring to?
|
| If someone says "water is extremely common in the solar
| system", I'd expect maybe two in three planets to have it.
| Half at minimum.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| More than half of divorce cases in the US mention
| compulsive pornography usage: https://s3.amazonaws.com/th
| f_media/2010/pdf/ManningTST.pdf
| Aachen wrote:
| ... I gotta say, that's a surprisingly good comeback. One
| would have to dive into the stats on how many people get
| married in the first place and then divorce (iirc the
| latter is about a third? At least in my country) and then
| halve that rate, so it's not going to be an "extremely"
| by any definition I think, but I do better see your
| point.
|
| Makes me think about gambling. Most people either don't
| do any or do it in normal proportions. For those that do
| have trouble, as this argument is about addiction after
| all, there's a self-imposed timeout mechanism that gets
| centrally registered so that any gambling place will
| enforce the timeout on this person. I don't know how much
| it helps, and it also goes into having to identify users
| to avoid circumventing even a self-imposed safeguard, but
| it might be an industry to compare against and draw
| research from (I haven't seen it mentioned yet in the
| greater thread).
| rchaud wrote:
| Porn absolutely _is_ dangerous if it becomes a habit.
|
| But just like binge-drinking and narcotics, parents and kids
| should have conversations and work together to build healthy
| ideas of sexuality. It shouldn't be a government decree
| thing, because that seemingly takes the responsibility off
| parents. But we all know a decree won't work, kids will find
| a way, so it will return to being the parents' problem.
| mrweasel wrote:
| This was actually what I was thinking, but sort of the
| other way around. We already have an age limit drinking,
| narcotics are more or less banned.
|
| I don't know how the US handles this, but online gambling
| is a pretty good model for this. You need to be of a
| certain age, verified with a government ID (here in Denmark
| at least) and if you have a gambling problem, you can add
| yourself to a list the ensures that you're blocked on all
| gambling sites (and casinos).
| GoofballJones wrote:
| Is it? Is this a States thing? That in the United States that
| nudity and pornography is "dangerous", yet in other cultures
| throughout Europe, it's not taken as seriously, nor does it
| have this overall "dangerous" tag to it (generally speaking
| that is. Prudish people trying to impose their will on others
| can be a world-wide phenomenon).
|
| And does this put a curb on explicit R rated movies that has
| nudity and acts of sex? Is it just the penetration shots that
| are "dangerous"? Also, it doesn't even touch on if ultra
| violent content strewn around, well, EVERYWHERE isn't
| "dangerous"? Where is the state bans on violence in movies and
| TV (they've already tried with video games)? But OMFG, if you
| dare to show a woman's breast, it's "dangerous".
|
| Give me a break.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Anything that can hijack the dopaminergic system should not
| be allowed to kids. Gambling, tiktok & smartphones in
| general, porn, drugs etc.
|
| We used to have shame as a societal mechanism to deal with
| these issues. It was shameful to be an alcoholic, which was
| how alcoholism was kept in check. The same way it was
| shameful in ancient Greece to surrender to your carnal urges.
|
| Shame is disappearing. Our societies are going haywire.
| jbar32 wrote:
| > Anything that can hijack the dopaminergic system
|
| This is far too broad, just because something could be used
| for evil is not enough to ban it for all children. What
| about TVs? Candy? Stimulating toys? I think all of these
| can have negative outcomes when abused, but that isn't
| enough for me to say all children should not access them.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| All online pornography is scientientifically demonstrated
| to be harmful for both children and adults, see the
| research: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
| HaZeust wrote:
| Places with robust systems for shame and conformation to
| its populace - particularly religious nations - are less
| civilized and developed than their "shameless" national
| counterparts. This isn't the only variable, and it's
| clearly not the determining factor. Push an agenda
| elsewhere.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Is there evidence shame prevents or treats addiction?
| Everything I've seen suggests the opposite.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > Is it? Is this a States thing? That in the United States
| that nudity and pornography is "dangerous", yet in other
| cultures throughout Europe, it's not taken as seriously, nor
| does it have this overall "dangerous" tag to it (generally
| speaking that is. Prudish people trying to impose their will
| on others can be a world-wide phenomenon).
|
| France and Germany have similar laws, and the UK is about to
| pass one.
|
| It would be nice if this were true, but it's not.
| skrbjc wrote:
| Surely you understand that happening to see a woman's nipple
| is completely different to a 14 year old sitting up at 4am
| masterbating to whatever intense porn they can get their
| hands on are two completely different things. And if you
| think the latter is bad, as you should, then it makes sense
| to err on the side of caution when figuring out a way to
| reduce the likelihood of a young person, who has not fully
| developed a sense of self control, getting sucked into the
| wormhole of a porn addiction. If that means reducing the
| likelihood of an innocent breast being seen, then that seems
| like a reasonable trade-off.
|
| Also, you say Europe is more open about nudity, implying that
| is a good thing, but Asia and the middle east are in many
| cases more prudish than even the US, so why not look to them
| or use them as an example? Where's your objective measure for
| which societies we should admire and emulate?
| throwaway743 wrote:
| It's embedded by the puritanical roots of the US. It's
| nonsense really.
| freedomben wrote:
| I agree generally that there is some serious puritanical
| roots in the US that are still at heavy play today. But
| there must be more to what's happening than just that. in
| other threads it's bewing shown that many European
| countries and Canada are passing similar laws. Puritanical
| roots of Europe?
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Honestly, idk enough about what's happening in Europe or
| Canada as it relates to this topic, but it's possible
| that there are other cultural or historical factors at
| play. My initial assumption is maybe it's due to a rise
| in conservatism in certain countries? Again, idk, I
| haven't been keeping up with the news on this.
|
| What's going on exactly? Which countries?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You're not at all sure why it's happening in multiple
| other countries, but you're completely confident it must
| be the 'puritanical roots of the US'?
| tivert wrote:
| > It's embedded by the puritanical roots of the US. It's
| nonsense really.
|
| It's worth noting that the reactionary response to that
| (e.g. porn is good and totally healthy and everything bad
| said about it is fake news) is _also_ nonsense.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| You're absolutely right, but the issue is more nuanced
| than simply "porn is good" or "porn is bad.". The root of
| the problem lies in the fact that the discussion around
| sex and sex health in the US is often clouded by
| puritanical beliefs and an aversion to discussing these
| topics in an open and honest manner. This typically leads
| to a lack of comprehensive sex education and the
| stigmatization of porn, which has never done anyone any
| good. As a country, we need to be more open and honest
| about sex, and recognize that censorship and puritanical
| attitudes have no place in shaping our laws or social
| norms.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| It's simply science, see the research for yourself:
| https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
| berkes wrote:
| But _is_ pornography dangerous for minors? Has it been
| researched? What "dangers" are there? Do these apply to all
| age groups of "minors"?
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| It's noteworthy to me that in your replies not one single
| comment links to any research. Multiple comments state point
| after point as fact with no sources, one comment directly
| ascribes its entire opinion to an anecdote.
|
| In short...I'm not getting the kind of perspective expanding
| value I often find on HN from this discussion. Just a lot of
| back and forth from people exchanging the opinions they
| already had before opening the parent article.
|
| I would instinctively agree that it's unhealthy for minors to
| have unchecked access to pornography but on the other hand I
| don't see how we could effectively address that problem
| societally without any kind of objective understanding of it.
| Has the exchange of unqualified personal opinions ever
| resulted in effective political policy, especially policy
| meant to manage a vice? That didn't work well for Prohibition
| or the War on Drugs.
| dopamean wrote:
| People rarely link to research on this site or any other.
| It's a social network. People want to share their opinion
| and so they do. I cant remember the last reply to a comment
| I saw on here that actually linked to research.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| That's generally true, but one common practice that
| originally drew me to HN was the frequent use of [#]
| citations by commenters to support their remarks with
| external sources. So in replies to a user specifically
| asking about research and evidence for these risks, it's
| disappointing for me to not see any research or evidence.
| afavour wrote:
| I suspect any academic study proposing to show pornography to
| minors is going to get shut down pretty quickly.
|
| In my own anecdotal experience I'd say it definitely can be
| dangerous and depends on a variety of factors, a key one IMO
| being what kind of pornography we're even talking about.
|
| In my youth we discovered a friends dad nudie mag stash. Lots
| of glamour photography of topless women, some full nudity too
| but always pretty tame all things considered. I don't think
| it had a negative effect on me. But the kind of porn
| available (and popular) on the internet is not that. From
| talking to a friends much younger brother I know they all
| have access to it and it's led to some weird perceptions
| about what sex is, should be, etc. It's rough, it's often
| degrading, it's almost exclusively focused on male
| satisfaction. It's much more about one person's power over
| another then snore any kind of intimacy.
|
| The solution to all of this is, as always, parental and
| school sex education to ensure kids are learning the right
| things. But as a society we're kind of terrified of that.
| berkes wrote:
| > I suspect any academic study proposing to show
| pornography to minors is going to get shut down pretty
| quickly.
|
| I highly doubt this, because it's both important and
| relevant. 16y/o _will_ consume pornography. I know I did,
| and I was 16 way before internet. Young adults will have
| had exposure before engaging in actual sex. This is
| important because it _might_ be problematic. Because it
| changes behavior. But also because the right nudges,
| education and context probably make the difference between
| this growing into problematic behavior or healthy, normal,
| human behavior.
|
| I know this is a difference between Europe and the US.
| Where the US (or any society under pressure of religious
| extremists, really) tries to simply forbid such research or
| knowledge. And hope (and pray) that by not knowing how this
| is shaping generations, it might simply go away. I'm pretty
| sure it won't just go away by praying hard and forbidding
| research. I'm pretty sure academics in this area know this
| very well too.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Any research which involved actually showing pornography
| to minors would almost certainly be shut down for ethical
| reasons. Studies would almost certainly have to be
| observational and post-facto, studying people who admit
| to having been exposed as minors.
|
| Medical ethics practices in the U.S. are actually very
| advanced and restrictive. I cannot imagine an IRB ever
| approving showing minors pornography especially given
| that there is a reasonable expectation of harm and
| essentially no expectation of benefit.
| haldujai wrote:
| You are completely correct with the minor edit that this
| study would never be shutdown as there is a 0% chance it
| ever gets approved.
|
| Beyond how strict IRB/REB boards are in general, there
| are also additional federal requirements that must be
| satisfied when submitting a study proposal on children
| including surveys and not just interventions. In the US
| these are the pathways:
|
| Section 404 requires that research poses no more than
| minimal risk. As the intervention itself is a federal
| crime this is not satisfied.
|
| Section 405 allows for more than minimal risk if the
| anticipated benefit for the study subject justifies the
| risk. There is no individual benefit to the minor for
| watching pornography.
|
| Section 406 requires that the risk is "commensurate with
| the subjects expected or actual psychological and social
| situations" which is hard to argue is expected when it is
| illegal to begin with. It also requires that the
| intervention is "likely to yield generalizable knowledge
| about the subjects' disorder or condition which is of
| vital importance for the understanding or amelioration of
| the subjects' disorder or condition", hard to argue that
| answering whether children viewing obscenity is addictive
| provides knowledge that is vitally important when there
| is no clear reason why children should be exposed to
| pornography.
|
| If an IRB cannot satisfy sections 404-406 the only other
| way to get such a study approved is section 407 which
| requires direct approval from the Secretary of Health and
| Human Services if the "research presents a reasonable
| opportunity to understand, prevent, or alleviate a
| serious problem affecting children's health or welfare,
| and, in addition, determines that the research will be
| conducted in accordance with sound ethical principles and
| that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the
| assent of children and permission of their parents or
| guardians". It is impossible that this would be satisfied
| as children NOT watching pornography (the alternative
| treatment/status quo) is hardly a problem let alone a
| serious one.
|
| This has nothing to do with religious justifications but
| is due to very reasonable and heightened ethics
| requirements when conducting research on children, be it
| pornography or a new medication. Canada is essentially
| the same and I can't speak to Europe but I imagine most
| countries have similar requirements regarding to needing
| to demonstrate likely benefit to research subjects or
| contribute to understanding of a disease (which is
| nonexistent in paediatrics).
|
| Every researcher thinks their question is relevant and
| important and that's why we have these rules in place.
|
| https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-
| policy/regulations/...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Meanwhile, people used to (before the invention of
| chimneys) live in the same room as their family and it
| would have been common for parents to be having sex whilst
| their children were sleeping in the same room (or
| pretending to sleep). I wonder if modern pornography is a
| response to our society become more prudish and private.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Well the state of Utah defines pornography as anything
| showing a female nipple, so they don't really have any
| ground to stand on when it comes to defining what is or
| isn't "harmful".
| zuminator wrote:
| If the intention is to expose young people to porn and then
| measure longitudinally how they fare in life, ethical
| issues aside, I suspect that wouldn't work because your
| control group is very likely to become contaminated. And
| good luck getting the experiment underwritten.
|
| Rather I think you'd take a large sample of adults at a
| given age range, interview them as to the earliest age they
| recall consuming pornography, and compare it with their
| life outcomes: income, alcohol addiction, educational
| achievement, etc. Of course you're only measuring a
| correlation, but at least you'll be able to get your study
| funded. And naturally such studies have been done, although
| I suspect many are agenda driven:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6571756/
|
| https://wchh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tre.7
| 9...
|
| (Many many more results in a casual web search)
| htag wrote:
| If you go the interview approach you'll run into many
| potential confounds. If the average age of first exposure
| is 13, and someone says they waited until 17, it's
| possible that a third variable delayed them from seeking
| porn and also will have an impact on other life incomes.
|
| This is why random assignment is the gold standard. With
| a large enough sample size random assignment will account
| for all confounds. Here, we can only measure likely
| confounds and attempt to 'account for' them with
| statistics. All of these introduces more noise and
| generally reduces the validity of the study.
|
| In general, I dismiss all scientific studies with these
| looking back questionnaires as little more than well
| documented hunches.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| It's probably about as dangerous to minors as sitting the
| minor in a room while 2 consenting adults have sex, or taking
| that minor to a strip club. Does the screen itself prevent
| trauma? Would you be ok with having your child exposed to
| either of these?
|
| What about a gentle and loving uncle molesting a child in a
| way not much different from playful wrestling? Wrestling is
| fine, but we all recognize the molestation is incredibly
| harmful, even in this situation (because the harm isn't the
| violence of it, it's the actual sex itself).
|
| This is just common sense. Of course sexualizing (sexually
| activating) children (which porn does) at a young age is
| harmful. It's probably very harmful to adults too in large
| doses like porn addiction.
| newswasboring wrote:
| > It's probably about as dangerous to minors as sitting the
| minor in a room while 2 consenting adults have sex, or
| taking that minor to a strip club.
|
| I think you have not seen the average porn online these
| days. Its way, way more extreme than this.
| vxNsr wrote:
| More likely they have not had sex or been to a strip
| club.
|
| Whenever I see people argue that porn is just like sex
| they always turn out to be minors or young adults who
| have only ever experienced porn and not intimate
| relationships.
| newswasboring wrote:
| That feels like a cruel assumption to make. But I think
| that says more about me than them.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I don't think it's cruel. There's nothing wrong with not
| having certain life experiences. I think it's wrong to
| make assertions without knowing all the facts which is
| what these types of people do all the time. (See
| /r/relationships for many examples).
| filoleg wrote:
| That's a solid hypothesis.
|
| After being to strip clubs just twice in my life, and
| with both of those being very different experiences, I
| have to agree with you. Comparing it to porn (let alone
| an actual intimate relationship) is like comparing
| watching fast & furious movies to average driving
| experiences. While F&F movies are technically more wild,
| the real life experience of actual driving (even if it is
| technically waaay more mild than in the movies) is way
| more stressful/impactful/etc, to the point where even
| making the comparison feels ridiculous.
| [deleted]
| Aachen wrote:
| GP was asking precisely because it is not common sense.
| mc32 wrote:
| Usually what happens in this environment is immature/
| underage people are exploited. You don't have to look far.
| The local track in your nearest city or megalopolises in
| India where adults sell off children, among other places in
| the world. In Mexico the local business guys go into the town
| plaza in the evenings and chat up young girls, in Japan you
| get "compensated dating". These are all places where they let
| those of modest means take advantage of the underprivileged
| and underdeveloped and treat them as objects.
| berkes wrote:
| You describe pornography depicting underage people. I'm
| sure there's consensus on why that is bad.
|
| I was, however, questioning whether minors _consuming_
| pornography is (always, and /or provably) bad.
| mc32 wrote:
| Do you think there is or isn't deleterious effects when
| children watch misogyny at a young age, what about
| watching programming that would show the beating of
| animals, even if animated and just for "fun", or
| programming that shows being "fat" is undesirable and
| indulging in bulimia is desirable (what could be wrong
| with over-eating and then just vomiting excess, right?)
|
| No, I think there are things young minds should be
| shielded from some things to avoid future mental
| developmental consequences.
|
| You know how movie directors make a movie and in their
| mind a given movie is supposed to be propaganda against
| something, but for people lacking this cultivated
| framework it's a celebration of doing the wrong thing?
| Take a movie about how being a gangster is bad --but for
| many moviegoers it's an invitation to the "glamorous"
| life or power, respect and success...
| funklute wrote:
| > Do you think there is or isn't deleterious effects when
| children watch misogyny at a young age, what about
| watching programming that would show the beating of
| animals, even if animated and just for "fun", or
| programming that shows being "fat" is undesirable and
| indulging in bulimia is desirable (what could be wrong
| with over-eating and then just vomiting excess, right?)
|
| I think he was asking (and rightly so) what the
| scientific evidence says, not what someone's opinion is.
| Aachen wrote:
| You're making false equations
|
| GP: is X actually harmful?
|
| You: a specific subset of X is, as well as entirely
| unrelated topic Y, don't you think? Clearly this should
| be prohibited
| mind-blight wrote:
| It does appear to be a bit more dangerous for minors than for
| adults. The main issue is that your brain is much more
| plastic around your teenage years and is more susceptible to
| building long-term habits.
|
| That manifested in unexpected ways for men recovering from
| porn-induced ED. The older men - those who hadn't grown up
| with high-speed internet porn - recovered significantly
| faster than the younger men.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| All online pornography is scientifically demonstrated to be
| harmful to people of all ages. See the research:
| https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
| [deleted]
| ufmace wrote:
| It seems likely to be, particularly in the forms available
| today. There seems to be increasing consciousness on this
| both on the left and the right.
|
| The Left has been increasingly concerned about the abusive
| acts becoming common in pornography and the seemingly
| pervasive use of underage or barely-of-age women with consent
| extremely sketchy or not present at all.
|
| The Right has been increasingly concerned about how the
| pervasive presence of pornography encourages people to focus
| on that for their needs rather than pursuing real-life
| relationships and obsess over extreme acts that very few real
| partners are actually willing to do.
|
| This is all exacerbated by internet startup tendencies, where
| maximizing "engagement" at all costs is the priority. It's in
| their incentives to maximize most of the bad effects that
| everyone is concerned about.
|
| It's not clear exactly how bad everything is or that this
| particular thing is the right way to address it. But clearly
| enough people are concerned about it and aren't willing to
| accept endless delaying tactics around insisting that you
| can't do any particular thing about it because it can't be
| proved to be perfect.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Is is the wrong word. 'Can be under a % of circumstances
| where the % may be too high for societies risk tolerance' may
| be more applicable.
| jliptzin wrote:
| I don't know how one would go about doing that research.
| Anecdotally I figured out the parental lock code on a cable
| box when I was 12, watched one of the porn channels, I was
| more excited that I was able to guess the code than anything
| else. The porn itself didn't really have any impact on me.
|
| My school also showed us Holocaust documentary footage around
| the same age. People getting shot in the head, piles and
| piles of dead bodies, etc. That plus gory movies like Hostel
| and scenes where people are chopped up and stuffed into a
| suitcase fucked me up WAY more than any of the porn I
| happened to come across at that age.
| megous wrote:
| Not all porn is just people sticking their penis into
| someone else's vagina. It can get pretty disturbing. And
| disturbing porn is not that harder to find as the non-
| disturbing one. Now it's the age of anyone being able to
| upload almost anything for anyone to easily see. And people
| do.
|
| (Anyway, I'm not for the internet wide parental lock. Just
| noting that things are different than in the past, with
| ease and breadth of access.)
| BurnGpuBurn wrote:
| [flagged]
| tnel77 wrote:
| This is definitely the thought provoking commentary I look
| for on Hacker News.
|
| Either make an intelligent argument or hush.
| intrasight wrote:
| Pornography is that which harms the soul. That's true of all
| people not just minors.
|
| The question then becomes what should be classified as
| pornography. Justice Stewart famously said "I know it when I
| see it". My definition is close: "pornography is that which
| harms my soul". That means that what is porn will differ for
| different people and probably by age as well.
| saberience wrote:
| Porngraphy harms the soul? What exactly is the soul you're
| referring to? Something metaphysical? Do you have any
| science or data behind this assertion?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I think what he's trying to say without actually saying
| it is that pornography is something that makes your
| eternal soul go to hell if you view it.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Then don't watch it. Let us have ours.
| intrasight wrote:
| Which, in case it wasn't clear, is exactly what I'm
| saying. What harms my soul differs from what harms your
| soul. The government should not be in the business of
| preventing the harm to one soul.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Ah ok sorry for my misunderstanding. In that case we are
| in agreement.
| the_doctah wrote:
| >Pornography is that which harms the soul.
|
| I believe they were asking for research or something
| measurable, not platitudes.
| intrasight wrote:
| My point being that it's not measurable, which is another
| reason for governments to not be involved.
| Aachen wrote:
| With that reasoning you can also put witches in prison
| indefinitely for "harming your soul". Sounds like logic
| from ages past to me
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| These are the type of questions that certain French
| postmodernist philosophers were asking around 1945.
| hhjinks wrote:
| I think it's perfectly fine to assume that pornography might
| warp a child's view of sex and intimacy. The solution
| shouldn't be to force people to identify themselves, though.
| Parents have all the tools they need to shield their children
| from pornhub, if they so wish.
| bumby wrote:
| I know HN tends toward the libertarian slant, but this same
| perspective can be applied to all kinds of ills that are
| regulated, from smoking to driving.
|
| This falls into the common refrain about "what do we do
| with kids who don't have responsible parents?"
|
| I'm not sure just letting the chips fall where they may
| when it comes to kids who got a shit roll of the dice when
| it comes to parents is a great societal solution.
| least wrote:
| I'd say that I don't think children should be limited in
| opportunity due to the circumstances of their upbringing,
| but with those considerations in mind, protecting them
| from finding a way to access pornography is pretty low on
| that list of priorities, especially given that
| legislation like this will be wholly ineffective at
| accomplishing its purported goal and will needlessly
| burden the people who are legally trying to access
| pornography.
|
| It's just not possible to address this issue without
| there being an intersection of how adults also access
| these adult things. A lot of other access controls in
| society are more reasonable than any proposal that people
| have come up with in this thread to restrict online
| pornography access to minors. This is why we place the
| burden on parents.
| bumby wrote:
| I think it's perfectly reasonable to say the risk isn't
| sufficient to justify this kind of action. But how
| exactly are you measuring the risk in terms of the higher
| priority risks you mention?
|
| I think the danger is people revert to their intuition
| about what is risky, rather than defining it by an
| objective measure.
| [deleted]
| berkes wrote:
| I agree that -without more knowledge- it's probably best to
| presume pornography might warp young peoples view of sex
| and intimacy.
|
| But isn't that all the more reason to research this and
| educate people in this? So that adults can provide context
| and background? And to learn which kind of pornography is
| more dangerous than others in this? So that, with knowledge
| kids can be shielded from the stuff that's bad from them,
| and help understand the stuff that isn't?
| degentracker12 wrote:
| Some of the world's oldest institutions have already
| researched this topic significantly and have worked
| together to compile and provide a common piece of
| literature that is widely available should you wish to
| embrace it.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I'm not really a fan of the solution (something more along
| the lines of the v-chip where commercial sites in the US
| are required to identify their content categories in a
| standard way so browsers could be configured to block it
| seems like a better solution), and sites like pornhub are
| straightforward enough to include in blocking software, but
| currently sites like Reddit present a problem. Looking at
| recent dumps[0], it looks like ~40% of posts on Reddit are
| marked nsfw, but those posts are on the same domain as
| things like /r/teenagers and /r/roblox. Without a MITM
| proxy, parents can't really block the porn half of the site
| unless they block the whole thing.
|
| [0] https://files.pushshift.io/reddit/submissions/
| mind-blight wrote:
| There's also the problem that lots is highly viewed NSFW
| content on Reddit isn't porn. Check out r/AskReddit.
| There are questions about how people feel about death
| that are marked NSFW for reasons I can't understand.
| ZekeSulastin wrote:
| Reddit has an account setting to hide NSFW-marked content
| from your feed and search results, so people will mark
| "distressing" content NSFW as a crude opt-in.
| theclansman wrote:
| I feel like in our society we're always beta testing
| everything before researching its effects, shouldn't we
| research the effects of internet pornography in kids before
| allowing them unlimited access to it? I think the same thing
| should be done with social media. There's obviously a thin
| line where you have to use common sense (where do we start
| and where do we stop?) but the consensus has always been that
| this is adult content just like violent movies and alcohol so
| it should be enforced in at least some way.
| BadThink6655321 wrote:
| Does the testimony of the adults who were negatively
| affected by it, both as adults and as children, count?
| megous wrote:
| > "shouldn't we research the effects of internet
| pornography in kids before allowing them unlimited access
| to it?"
|
| Is that a rhethorical question? People of all ages capable
| of using it already have mostly unlimited access to the
| internet (and thus to porn). Sans parents understanding the
| internet more these days, and trying to set limits and
| failing.
|
| Question should be whether somebody should do research
| before trying to limit access state/country wide in various
| ways. Ie. bigotry vs some informed decision making.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > shouldn't we research the effects of internet pornography
| in kids before
|
| How do you propose we do that ethically?
| megous wrote:
| Observational studies.
|
| Problem with self selection (identify kids who decided to
| watch porn in the past, and compare with those that
| didn't) probably will not be that huge, when the people
| are only outraged about "kids" self selecting to watch
| porn.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| You can interview people about their past experiences.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| You can't interview someone about something before that
| something exists though, which is what the parent comment
| is proposing.
| Aachen wrote:
| Internet pornography exists, last I checked (also when I
| first checked, but apparently that should have been
| illegal). What are you referring to?
| [deleted]
| loeg wrote:
| They are talking about this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35787466
|
| > I feel like in our society we're always beta testing
| everything before researching its effects, shouldn't we
| research the effects of internet pornography in kids
| before allowing them unlimited access to it?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Yes, apologies, I realised that as soon as I said it.
| berkes wrote:
| I'm no sociological, or psychological scholar, but I can
| imagine that simply by asking kids in high school
| questions, you'll learn plenty.
|
| There are _many_ researches done and still being done on
| how addictive drugs are, or on the negative (or positive)
| effects of drugs. Eventhough they are both illegal and
| often rather dangerous. You don 't need to feed a healthy
| 15 year/old a daily near overdose of cocaine to learn
| about the effects of cocaine on a young persons' brains.
| matt_s wrote:
| I suspect the effects are mental/emotional and a research
| team may not be conducting statistical research like
| group A/group B types of studies but there could be value
| in research on current 18-25 year olds, their
| social/mental/emotional well being and gathering info on
| how early they may have consumed it, frequency, along
| with rates of clinical disorders. Surveys or research on
| college campuses would probably be the easiest method of
| gathering data for that age group.
| 0zemp2c wrote:
| > What "dangers" are there?
|
| turning in to a pathetic, obese lech who sits at home alone
| blowing another paycheck on Onlyfans, clinging to the
| misguided notion that women want anal on the first date?
|
| and even worse, when real life doesn't line up with six-
| minute videos, the even worse outcome of woman-hating
| manifests
| berkes wrote:
| Isn't that all the more reason to educate, research and
| invest in this? Rather than forbidding it?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It's addictive for one. There are increasing number of
| support groups for men who are struggling with pornography
| use and for their spouses in dealing with having a dependant
| partner.
|
| It creates a space for people to explore and normalise their
| distressing sexual interests without questioning the root
| causes.
|
| Producers will often intentionally seek out vulnerable young
| women and groom them with promises of fame and riches, only
| for them to become reliant on painkillers and other drugs to
| cope with the reality of it.
|
| It creates a market for the abuse of trafficking victims.
| Most sites don't require verification of consent and most
| users don't care.
|
| It teaches men to objectify their partners and to see them as
| something to be shared. There is a huge market now for non
| consensual revenge pornography. Reddit has seen multiple
| subreddiys dedicated to non-consensual intimate media.
|
| It provides a safe space for people to express racist,
| misogynistic and otherwise antisocial viewpoints.
|
| PornHub in its front page today has videos of stimulated
| assaults and incest. For young viewers it gives them the idea
| that it's normal to be sexually interested in these things.
|
| I'm not religious. I'm sex positive and believe in being open
| with children about the realities of life. Pornography stole
| years of my life, warped my views of relationships and
| prevented me from reflecting seriously on my own traumas.
| laserlight wrote:
| > It's addictive for one.
|
| Citation needed. Porn addiction doesn't exist [0].
|
| [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/porn-
| addiction
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It would fall under Compulsive Sexual Behaviour
| Disorder[0] in ICD-10. [1]
|
| Pornography Addiction as a unique pathology is still not
| recognised but the issue is still young. We can see that
| it's an issue in that more than half of US divorce cases
| mention compulsive pornography usage. [2]
|
| You can read more about Pornography Addiction and what I
| mean by that over at Wikipedia. [3]
|
| You can see support groups for self-identifying addicts
| in places like Reddit. [4][5]
|
| Furthermore, mutual support groups for partners of
| addicts. [6]
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_sexual_beha
| viour_...
|
| 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10
|
| 2: https://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2010/pdf/ManningTST
| .pdf
|
| 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_addiction
|
| 4: https://old.reddit.com/r/PornAddiction/
|
| 5: https://old.reddit.com/r/pornfree/
|
| 6: https://old.reddit.com/r/loveafterporn/
| laserlight wrote:
| Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder is not an addiction.
| The Wikipedia article that you cited begins with the
| following sentence: "Pornography addiction is the popular
| but unscientific[5] application of an addiction model to
| the use of pornography."
|
| [5] Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You
| Should, Too.
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-
| stray/2018...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I'd love to stop believing in it but it's destroyed a
| large part of my life.
|
| The issue with defining it as an addiction is more of a
| question of separating from other compulsive issues than
| not recognising the compulsive issues of the thing
| itself.
|
| Yes, I understand there's a difference between compulsion
| and addiction but I'd expect the users of Hacker News to
| understand enough about how the dopamine system works to
| see the relationship between the two.
| laserlight wrote:
| I'm sorry for your struggles. I hope that you are doing
| better.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Thank you, I greatly appreciatie your well wishes and the
| human sentiment behind your remark. I'm glad to have
| places like this and people like yourself that challenge
| my beliefs, even when, or especially when, they are
| rooted in my personal experience.
| haldujai wrote:
| You're a bit overly focused on semantics here and
| misinterpreting the rationale behind it.
|
| Behavioral addictions are acknowledged in DSM-5 although
| this does not extend to compulsive sexual behavior at
| this time due to insufficient (yet growing) evidence to
| suggest similar neurophysiological mechanisms for a
| clinical textbook to label it as 'addiction' [0][2].
|
| A recent review article breaks down the differences from
| gambling which is considered a behavioral addiction in
| DSM-5[1] and had not been in prior editions.
|
| Whether or not CSB/hypersexuality is an 'addiction' in
| the medical sense is controversial amongst medical
| experts and essentially interchangeable with what a
| layperson considers to be an addiction and it is
| therefore very reasonable especially noting the overlap
| of salience, conflict and relapse[1].
|
| Although there is insufficient evidence at this time to
| conclude either way whether diminished satisfaction has a
| similar mechanism to tolerance or lack of control has a
| similar mechanism to withdrawal there is also no strong
| evidence to support the argument that CSB is not an
| addiction and consequently they are currently treated as
| separate entities.
|
| The pertinence of this is to not conflate
| conflicting/controversial expert opinion with generally
| regarded truth and therefore stating that parent is
| 'wrong' for believing it is addiction when many experts
| share the same opinion[3].
|
| [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/add.
| 13297
|
| [1] https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/11/2/articl
| e-p166....
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4677151/
|
| [3] https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/11/2/articl
| e-p210....
| Georgelemental wrote:
| I know someone who struggled with porn addiction. The
| person you replied to admitted to struggling with it.
| It's real, as an empirically observable fact.
| laserlight wrote:
| A struggling person finding relief in porn doesn't mean
| that porn is addictive.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The porn did not "relieve" anything, it was the _source_
| of the problem.
| laserlight wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your anecdote. Because it hasn't been
| my experience, I prefer to take scientific studies as my
| guide.
| haldujai wrote:
| What studies? The link you shared is a click-baity
| ("Science stopped believing in X and you should too")
| article by an individual clinical psychologist
| referencing (and overstating) the findings of a proposed
| etiological model and accompanying systematic review
| which suggested moral incongruity as one underlying
| cause, perhaps the key cause in these authors
| opinions[0].
|
| Notably this study predated the addition of compulsive
| sexual behavior disorder to ICD-11 and was neither
| validated nor accepted as the correct model (hence
| excessive use of 'proposed' and 'preliminary'). You may
| also notice there are seven separate commentaries in
| response to this study with an eighth by the original
| authors in which they acknowledge the several limitations
| of their proposed model[1] and make the following
| statement:
|
| "Rather than present an argument against CSBD, it is our
| intention and belief that our model of PPMI adds needed
| nuance to ensure the accurate use of the CSBD diagnosis."
|
| [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-
| 1248-x
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-
| 1406-9
| [deleted]
| sickofparadox wrote:
| "It seems that POPU (Problematic Online Porn Usage) is
| not only one subtype of hypersexual disorder, but
| currently the most prevalent since it also frequently
| involves masturbation. Although this is difficult to
| accurately determine given the anonymity and
| accessibility factors that make pornography use today so
| pervasive, we can at least confirm that the patron of
| consumption for pornography has changed for roughly the
| last decade. ... As far as we know, a number of recent
| studies support this entity as an addiction with
| important clinical manifestations such as sexual
| dysfunction and psychosexual dissatisfaction. Most of the
| existing work is based off on similar research done on
| substance addicts, based on the hypothesis of online
| pornography as a 'supranormal stimulus' akin to an actual
| substance that, through continued consumption, can spark
| an addictive disorder. However, concepts like tolerance
| and abstinence are not yet clearly established enough to
| merit the labeling of addiction, and thus constitute a
| crucial part of future research. For the moment, a
| diagnostic entity encompassing out of control sexual
| behavior has been included in the ICD-11 due to its
| current clinical relevance, and it will surely be of use
| to address patients with these symptoms that ask
| clinicians for help."
|
| Porn addiction has not been classified as an addiction in
| and of itself because researchers are unsure that it is
| its own addiction, or a subset of other sexual related
| addictions and disorders. So it is highly likely that
| porn is addictive, but medical professionals are hesitant
| to declare "porn addiction" as a diagnosis without seeing
| if it is separated from other problematic sexual
| behaviors.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6352245/
| laserlight wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this reference.
|
| > researchers are unsure that it is its own addiction
|
| Yes. Indeed, this is the reason experts object to the
| term "porn addiction". Some "addicts" might be consuming
| a lot of porn, but that doesn't mean that porn is
| addictive --- just like how alcoholics use bottles a lot,
| but bottles are not addictive.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Let's hope that public discourse will continue and draw
| attention to the need for further research.
|
| I've been addicted to pornography myself and spoken with
| many men who say the same, as well as many women who have
| had their relationships and mental health destroyed by
| being partnered with people like myself.
|
| The current state of research and recognition is not
| always reflective of reality. I'd hope that anyone
| familiar with the history of science could accept that.
| hvis wrote:
| Sugar is addictive. And it might have more effect on your
| lifespan than the consumption of pornography. Quality of
| life, too.
| GalahiSimtam wrote:
| Why do I see this fallacy all over anti-porn threads?
| Keto diets might be a fad and about as difficult as
| quitting porn, but still.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Yes it is, and that's why we teach our children about
| nutritional health and, in some places, regulate things
| like school dinners and products aimed at children.
|
| What point are you making in relation to the topic at
| hand?
| pnt12 wrote:
| And does Utah have a strong sex education curriculum, to
| teach children about it?
|
| I assume no - it's just a ban on sinful behavior.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Let's hope they are also exploring the avenues indeed.
| loeg wrote:
| I can't read GP's mind, but sugar doesn't require ID
| verification to buy in the state of Utah, for example.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| No, but driving a car or possessing a gun does. Different
| solutions for different issues is hardly a contentious
| proposal.
| loeg wrote:
| Earlier you were concerned about the possible risk of
| addiction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35788237
|
| Are cars or guns regulated because of addiction? No. So
| GP compared porn to sugar, which is considered addictive
| and has probably more concrete evidence of self-harm than
| porn. I think the comparison is apt? Certainly fairer
| than comparing porn to driving a car or gun possession,
| which is sort of absurd.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Addictiveness was one of the multiple points I made about
| pornography. The other aspects apply to pornography and
| not to sugar. So it was apples and oranges to begin with.
|
| But in terms of addiction potential alone Utah already
| has precedent in legislating for that. Example: Utah
| doesn't allow minors to purchase alcohol because of its
| addictive nature.
| hvis wrote:
| Most of your other points related to how pornography is
| produced, not to its consumption. Thus it wouldn't matter
| who is watching it, and thus ID check seems irrelevant.
|
| Some of the aspects of the porn market are not great, but
| they should be investigated by the relevant authorities.
| Hiding them from only certain people won't make them go
| away.
| bumby wrote:
| They might if sugar was able to be consumed for free with
| virtually unlimited access. I'm not sure it's a very good
| analogy.
| loeg wrote:
| It more or less is? It's extremely inexpensive.
| bumby wrote:
| Lottery tickets are extremely inexpensive. But what do
| you think would happen to consumption of lotto tickets if
| they went from $3 to free, especially in a frictionless
| environment where you can just download them?
| loeg wrote:
| Lottery tickets are substantially more expensive than
| sugar. And if lotto tickets were free, (1) there would be
| no harm in consuming them and (2) you would also win $0,
| and no one would buy them.
| bumby wrote:
| That's kinda the point. Sugar is also "substantially"
| more expensive than "free" pornography. With your analogy
| of sugar, there isn't the same asymmetry of risk/reward
| as there is with "free" pornography.
|
| The reward of lotto tickets is a function of cost with
| the current approach, but that's the wrong point to get
| wrapped around the axle. Consider instead that if the
| lotto reward is funded by taxes. The point is the
| risk/reward profile gets skewed.
|
| As an aside, I'm pretty sure you can find evidence that
| excessive gambling is a net negative.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Extremely inexpensive is infinitely expensive when you're
| a 13 year old with 2 dollars to your name.
| loeg wrote:
| It does not need to be literally the same thing to be a
| useful point of comparison, which is the nitpick argument
| bumby was making.
| bumby wrote:
| Not nitpicking, I'm just saying a weak analogy doesn't
| strengthen your case. Equating sugar to porn misses some
| of the important aspects of what makes porn potentially
| dangerous.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I was replying to your own position of it being extremely
| inexpensive. I understand that comparisons and metaphors
| are never 1 to 1. If you have another point to make then
| I'll gladly hear it out.
| GoofballJones wrote:
| It is free. It LITERALLY is in unlimited access. It's in
| everything you eat...unless you live in a cave and only
| eat squirrels and rabbits. Especially in the US where
| High Fructose Corn Syrup is in nearly every product
| that's consumed. Pornography is no where near as
| dangerous as the obesity epidemic in the United States,
| which costs the citizens and corporations billions and
| billions of dollars a year on healthcare alone. But sure,
| let's focus on porn.
| bumby wrote:
| Nobody is claiming obesity isn't a risk. But it's an
| error to equate sugar to the obesity for one. It is also
| not "literally" unlimited access unless the cost of sugar
| is zero and that's easily falsifiable. I'm assuming your
| point is that people can have as much sugar as they want.
| Two, food is necessary to life but porn is not. That
| makes controlling food much, much harder. It would be
| like someone addicted to sex having to walk through a
| brothel every day to get to work. Sugar is inexpensive
| (but still not free) and we're experiencing the bad
| effects so I'm not sure what you're pointing out other
| than as vices get more free and more accessible, the
| scale shifts towards worse outcomes. Your whole point
| boils down to whataboutism rather than debating the
| actual points.
|
| Lastly, I'm not sure you made any case that pornography
| is relatively safe.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| We can tackle multiple issues at once. My country taxes
| sugar already.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Do you have sources for any of these points, or are they
| all personal opinion?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I chose these points specifically because I felt I could
| back them up with sources if pressed.
|
| I began with personal opinion and then removed everything
| I felt wouldn't stand to scrutiny, even if I do still
| believe it.
|
| I chose not to include sources immediately because that
| would have required a great deal of upfront effort on my
| behalf, which I wasn't willing to spend since this is
| also a place where I come to find relaxation as well as
| intellectual stimulation.
|
| If there are any particular points you're interested in
| discussing I'll be glad to share the basis for my belief
| and go into discussion.
|
| If it's all of them then that still goes but it may be a
| week before I get back to you.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| Why do you think that? I think it's a good thing for minors to
| have unrestricted access to porn
| 0zemp2c wrote:
| [flagged]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "Children, after we watch Daniel Tiger, we will watch what
| happens to this school teacher by all these men"
|
| There is actually a long dark history of adults abusing
| children by exposing/exploiting them in regards to such
| topics. It was rife in Germany post WW2 in certain
| communities, currently a huge issue in Pakistan. Child
| trafficking on an absolute basis is higher now than it has
| been.
|
| That's just to say, people like who you are asking to seek
| help are numerous and unchecked behavior in this area has a
| dark history in humanity.
| e40 wrote:
| My 22 year old son vehemently disagrees. And from what I've
| read from young men, many agree with him. When I (we?) were
| kids porn was Playboy or Penthouse or Hustler. Tame by
| comparison to today. As my son stressed with me, you can find
| _anything_ via the internet. Anything. ANYTHING. A developing
| brain can't unsee stuff and it does warp people's perceptions
| of what is normal.
|
| Having said that, I am deeply suspicious of any move to
| "protect the children" because it's always used as a cover
| for a move toward authoritarianism.
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm not that much older than your son and had a different
| experience. (My youth was definitely not magazines, if
| that's what playboy and penthouse are supposed to refer
| to.) I think we'll need more than n=2 before being able to
| come to an informed conclusion here.
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Call me a prude.
|
| Call me old fashioned.
|
| Call me small minded.
|
| But watching a woman getting chocked while DPed in her anus
| while a half dozen men ejaculate on her is _not_ the type of
| extra-curricular activity [1] I want my soon to be teenaged
| daughters ' boyfriends interested in.
|
| Im just... overprotective I guess.
|
| [1] If anyone calls me out for knowing what's on the front
| page of all of these smut sites, guess what? We _all_ know
| what 's on those sites!
| the_doctah wrote:
| Getting choked is a common fetish though.
| 3np wrote:
| Would it be as prevalent if minors weren't exposed to
| hardcore porn?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Does it matter? Why is it bad when people like getting
| choked and it's happening consensually?
| kemayo wrote:
| Choking's sort of an interesting case for this, because
| it's one where someone should (ideally) also be doing it
| _safely_. Someone can enjoy it and consent to it, but not
| be sufficiently educated to do it without more risk than
| they realize. (This applies to many acts, but this one 's
| particularly potentially-lethal.)
|
| Porn, being a fantasy, rarely shows the prep-work
| required to do something properly. This is what I
| personally worry about when it comes to setting the wrong
| expectations in kids who haven't had that whole "this
| isn't representative of real sex" context properly set,
| leaving them thinking they can reproduce what's happening
| on-screen without realizing the background work
| required...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's the same with Shibari, that's in fact a lot more
| dangerous than choking if not done properly. Because
| choking you can simply stop when you notice it's going
| wrong. A Shibari rope that isn't secured and suddenly
| slips to the neck takes time to cut.
|
| Yet Shibari is viewed as an art form because it's much
| more stylish.
|
| But people really into this kind of stuff are also very
| much into consent and safe practices. Is there really a
| wave of accidental chokings?
|
| School shootings on the other hand... Maybe we should
| look at violent movies first?
| drdeca wrote:
| What is a fetish? It is the scar that guides the knife.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Do you have any evidence?
|
| Seems like a whole lot of people were deeply hurt by
| feet.
| dageshi wrote:
| If you've ever taken a look at the "Popular with Women"
| category on PH or similar sites, it seems like women
| sometimes actively seek out more degrading porn than you
| might expect.
| iamleppert wrote:
| If you're that concerned about it you should talk to your
| daughter about the risks of consenting to group sex, and
| the risks of hanging out with boys who are interested in
| it.
|
| All this content was available when I was a teenager and my
| friends watched it. Those who actually follow through with
| having group activities quickly find out that it's way
| different than porn and not really all that enjoyable
| anyway.
| Brybry wrote:
| But high school kids are having less sex and, those that
| do, with fewer partners and it continues to trend down. [1]
|
| So, assuming porn has any effect at all, it's possible
| highly available internet porn is _decreasing_ the amount
| of sex kids are having.
|
| The sexual violence trend on page 56 is concerning however
| it looks like the CDC has not been tracking that question
| as long either (only 4 year trend instead of 10+ like other
| categories).
|
| Another concerning thing to me is the decreasing condom
| use, especially with current abortion trends. If we think
| porn drives behavior, maybe porn actors should be mandated
| to use condoms.
|
| [1]
| https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/yrbs_data-
| sum... [Page 14 (17 pdf)]
| claudiawerner wrote:
| >But watching a woman getting chocked while DPed in her
| anus while a half dozen men ejaculate on her is not the
| type of extra-curricular activity [1] I want my soon to be
| teenaged daughters' boyfriends interested in.
|
| If this is consensual, it actually sounds rather fun. But
| it's interesting that the example is simply an amalgamation
| of relatively common things:
|
| * Choking is a common kink * Anal sex is a common sex act *
| Group sex is at least a common fantasy; I don't know how
| common double anal penetration is outside porn though *
| Providing and receiving facials is also quite common as an
| alternative to spitting.
|
| All of the acts are relatively innocuous on their own, but
| the combination is portrayed to be almost demonic :)
| jnwatson wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to your argument, but consider the case
| where you remove the sex from the above picture. It is
| normal and not specially restricted to have violent
| torture-like scenes in modern media.
|
| The problem isn't the sex. The problem is the violence.
| wnolens wrote:
| haha.. as if it would be her boyfriend's fault. Way to pass
| the blame.
|
| Download the latest dating app - Feeld - and peruse for
| yourself what women explicitly state that they are looking
| for when the shame for stating so is removed/reduced.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This kind of porn has been around for decades and very few
| people actually do that kind of stuff. Something that's
| published isn't automatically a role model.
|
| And the ones that do are really and truly into it. Yes it
| happens, it's not my kind of thing either but I know some
| people that love it.
|
| What helps more is real sex ed. Explaining what sex is
| about, how to respect a partner, about safety. Rather than
| really easily circumventable bans. I got good sex ed when I
| was young in the Netherlands and I turned out fine and very
| respectful to women just like my peers despite having
| access to porn. The problem are religious schools not
| wanting to do serious sex ed. So the kids only have porn to
| go by.
| Longlius wrote:
| I think it's good, but I really wish the solution was, "We need
| parents to take a more active role in their children's lives
| and supervise their internet usage" and not, "Lockdown and de-
| anonymize the web."
| afavour wrote:
| You'll get some angry responses to this but I think it's very
| worthwhile to say. _Yes_ , ID verification in order to watch
| pornography is deeply Orwellian and terrifying (which is the
| aspect places like HN tend to focus on) but the bulk of the
| public support for these measures isn't because people want
| government surveillance, it's because they want to look out for
| children. Are they misguided? Perhaps. But you can't win them
| over without addressing it. Shouting "it's government
| overreach!" at those people will achieve nothing.
| xdennis wrote:
| > it's because they want to look out for children
|
| The issue is that it's _their_ job to look out for their
| children.
|
| We don't force all beds to have "walls", and give adults the
| keys to lower them if they show proof of age. Parents are
| supposed to buy _cribs_ for their children.
| Curvature5868 wrote:
| Should pornography be allowed to be displayed on billboards
| or in storefront windows? Is it the job of parents to cover
| their children's eyes as they stroll through town? As a
| society we have (mostly) set limits on where pornography
| can be accessed. Adult shops have a proprietor who can shoo
| kids out. Is the www different from public streets?
| BadThink6655321 wrote:
| Just recently a black child, who was born at home with
| jaundice, was taken from the parents to be given care in a
| hospital, because a doctor didn't think the parents would
| provide effective treatment.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/temecia-rodney-mila-jackson-
| ret...
| haldujai wrote:
| It's unequivocal that the state has the right and
| obligation to intervene in cases of child neglect/abuse
| (which refusal or inability to provide necessary medical
| care is an example of) and is easily evidenced by the
| existence of agencies like the Child Protective Services
| or Children's Aid Society.
|
| It is completely unnecessary to state the child's
| ethnicity to make this point which is entirely irrelevant
| to the argument you are attempting to make.
| wyldberry wrote:
| It takes a village to raise children. While it is the
| parent's responsibility to raise a child, it's not
| unreasonable for them to ask government to make society
| conducive for raising and protecting the next generation.
| The incentives are mismatched. The organizations providing
| access to pornography have no incentive to limit access to
| their product without legal enforcement.
|
| Hacker News is filled with technical people. However, think
| about all the workers who are not tech workers who have
| families. The burden of knowledge for these parents to
| setup home networks and devices that provide content
| filtering, monitoring, and alerting is way too high.
|
| Access to pornography ends up being an economic negative
| externality caused by the increased access to the internet,
| and we haven't really figured out how to handle the cost.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| But if a parent neglects those responsibilities society is
| understood to have the right to intervene. In other words,
| the state has the responsibility to intervene on behalf of
| society for the well being of children. Given that
| responsibility, its pretty easy to suggest that the state
| has the power to make laws which may protect children over
| and above what individual parents might do.
| ericmay wrote:
| Just to be clear that:
|
| > but the bulk of the public support for these measures isn't
| because people want government surveillance
|
| Does not mean the majority of the public supports those
| measures, though perhaps those who do support those measures
| do so because of reasons other than explicitly wanting the
| government to surveil them.
|
| I don't think you are implying that the majority of the
| public supports those measures but I did want to make it
| clear that this was still an open question.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes "think about the children". If anything, there should be a
| law that forces all ISPs and even device manufacturers of
| "internet enabled devices" to have clear instructions on how to
| use parental controls.
|
| This would be far less onerous since it's already a feature
| they have and it protects privacy.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Except despite the vast amounts of counter-evidence, people
| still are somehow dumb enough to think that hiding stuff from
| kids works (drugs, guns, porn, e.t.c).
|
| Porn is absolutely fine for kids to watch as long as the
| parents properly contextualize it. The issue is that somehow
| societally accepted that its taboo to talk to your kid about
| sex at an early age, and plenty of otherwise normal parents are
| embarrassed to do it.
| 0zemp2c wrote:
| [flagged]
| ActorNightly wrote:
| This isn't the place to preach about your religious
| "purity" dogma.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| What did they say about either religion or purity?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Anti porn or anti sex sentiment is rooted in religion.
| Even if the person isn't practicing religion, him or her
| holding these views are indicative of some religious
| upbringing with the standard amount of brainwashing.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| And what's your basis for that belief?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Where else would someone gain this sentiment?
|
| Certainly not rational thinking, people aren't discussing
| specific psychological research at mass. The instant ad
| hominem attack instead of rational discussion is highly
| indicative of ideological underpinning.
|
| United States certainly and unfortunately has a strong
| religious background. Quite a few remnants of it are in
| peoples minds without it realizing it. For example, lot
| of people would consider it rude not to say "Bless you"
| when someone sneezes, which is 100% religious origin.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| There are many non-religious arguments being made in this
| very thread, some of which can be backed up by science
| and others which can be supported by evidence.
|
| You're accusing them of lacking rational thinking and
| leaping to personal attacks while doing the same.
|
| Many of the users of this site are not from the US and
| many live in some of the world's most secular societies.
| Myrmornis wrote:
| What age would you suggest having these conversations so that
| the kids' porn-viewing sessions can commence?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Puberty age sounds logical.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| As early as 4. Not jumping straight to porn, but starting
| sex ed.
|
| It works very well in Netherlands, where teens end up
| having much healthier relationships, fewer sexual partners,
| and less unwanted pregnancies.
| sh4rks wrote:
| In what world is sex-Ed comparable to hardcore
| pornography?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Sex ed provides context to pornography. It doesn't
| compare but it sets a baseline as to what's normal and
| what's fiction.
|
| I'm sure none of my school peers thought bukkake sessions
| were actually normal behavior even though they would have
| been aware of them.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Who said anything about hardcore pornography? 2 people
| having consensual romantic sex is still porn. Nothing
| wrong with educating a kid how sex works by showing
| him/her a video of that.
|
| At some point later in the years, the kid will probably
| stumble onto some hardcore porn, but if you contextualize
| it properly, he/she will understand that its not how real
| relationships work.
|
| In the same way, its ok (and probably good) if your teen
| tries weed/alcohol under your supervision, with the
| proper education around it, but you aren't going to give
| your kid like a heroin injection just because he/she is
| curious. But the fact that you establish trust and
| educate your kid about drugs that he/she will certainly
| come across is the more important bit about them staying
| away from harder drugs. Instead of outright ban, and then
| kid discovering how good weed makes them feel, and then
| going out and trying harder drugs.
|
| Like I shouldn't have to explain this basic concepts to
| people. Really makes me worry about all the parents
| raising their kids these days.
| sh4rks wrote:
| > who said anything about hardcore pornography
|
| Well the main article is about PornHub which is a
| hardcore pornography site, so...
|
| I have no problem with sex-Ed for kids
| mariusor wrote:
| I think in a world in which teenagers have a
| realistic/healthy view on their sexuality and human
| sexuality in general is a world in which they are capable
| of inferring that what can be seen in porn is
| unrealistic, most of the time demeaning, and not
| something to be idealised.
| DougN7 wrote:
| Porn is very addictive to many people (Reddit has some great
| posts by many people trying to break free) - anything that
| gives you a huge dose of dopamine for little effort can be
| dangerous to someone's life (not medically dangerous, but
| certainly emotionally and motivationally). It's like saying
| drugs are absolutely fine because they don't destroy everyone
| that take them. Or maybe alcohol is a better comparison.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Doesn't real sex provide similar dopamine release? If so,
| what's so bad about it when real sex is not available at
| the time?
|
| I'm sure some people get addicted but people with talent
| for it can get addicted to pretty much anything
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Porn is very addictive because the person has no idea how
| to form real life relationships and engage in real sex in a
| healthy way.
|
| In the same way video games are very addictive because it
| gives you a sense of accomplishment when you have no mental
| tools to go out and improve your situation in life.
|
| In the same way weed is addictive when you have no mental
| tools to face hardships in your life and you would rather
| escape into a care free state of mind.
|
| Nothing to do with the things at hand, everything to do
| with mental conditioning from an early age, a.k.a
| upbringing, a.k.a parenting.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Do you think children should be able to purchase cannabis
| products at dispensaries?
| loeg wrote:
| As opposed to from some guy at their school, black
| market?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Of course there's a black market for anything but
| controlling distribution definitely does help.
| [deleted]
| DougN7 wrote:
| That sounds like everything to do with the thing at hand
| to me. We wish everyone had the awesome perfect parents.
| That's never going to happen. And even kids with great
| parents fall into the traps you mentioned above. All the
| things above are dangerous to people's lives for the
| reasons you mentioned, and more reasons you didn't
| mention.
| [deleted]
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| I have even wondered why it's that big a deal for many
| people. I guess idle minds have nothing better to do other
| than think about solely sex, porn, food or drugs. And the
| only way they can prevent themselves from overindulging in
| these things is to have an external authority figure like the
| government impose strict restrictions on them.
|
| Personal observation: most people just do fine if they are
| exposed to porn as kids. In fact they are more well-rounded,
| and intellectually mature compared to their peers who were
| never exposed to those things early on, just like all other
| topics.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| You're equating porn with sexuality. I'm a grown man and I
| find most of what's on the front page of PornHub to be deeply
| disturbing. I see racism, misogyny, incest, even simulated
| assault.
|
| In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need
| to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're
| normalising by calling this stuff harmless.
|
| And I don't get what you're suggesting in saying hiding stuff
| doesn't work. Like, I like to enjoy a bit of LSD sometimes
| but I definitely keep that out of reach of children.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| You are totally right. While we are at it, lets ban video
| games because they obviously cause school shootings.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| That's a strawman no? You're trying to colour my argument
| by associating it with another one.
|
| There are some notable differences though. If I play a
| violent video game then no one is actually being shot.
|
| If I watch a woman being choked and ejaculated on by 20
| men calling her a worthless slut whore in a porno then
| I'm watching that genuinely happening.
|
| It's more akin to letting children watch videos from
| actual warzones. Even as an adult I find beheading videos
| to be disturbing.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Except that you skip over the whole "Media contains
| certain content -> viewing this content leads to bad
| behaviour -> said media should be banned" argument as
| being valid, which is not. You have to demonstrate the
| causal link between the first two.
|
| Also, your subsequent argument is flawed. For the vast
| majority of popular porn, an actress in a scene where she
| is "abused" is doing so consensually. Part of having
| healthy romantic relationships in life is being able to
| navigate the aspect of consent. For example, a girl may
| have different standards for sexual intercourse when it
| comes to having a one night stand, where she may engage
| in kink or a fetish, versus a long term relationship
| where she may not want to do that. If you are unable to
| contextualize this, this means that your parents did a
| poor job of educating you about sexuality, which further
| reinforces my argument.
|
| This absolutely does not equate to ISIS beheading videos,
| where the people being beheaded are most likely not
| consenting to it.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I'm skipping over it because there are inherent
| differences in different types of media. A) Video games
| don't involve real people and B) Sexuality is wired in
| the mammalian brain in a unique way. We can't generalise
| so easily as you're suggesting.
|
| If I see an actress in a movie being shot, she's not
| actually being shot. If I see an actress in a porn movie
| being choked, she's actually being choked. That's not a
| question of consent, it's a question of content.
|
| But on that note, have you ever worked a shitty or
| degrading job and had to do things you found painful
| because you couldn't afford to say no? I have. It's
| painful to go through. I can't imagine coupling that with
| the complex layers of human sexuality.
|
| You're saying it doesn't equate because of consent but
| that's not the aspect I was equating.
|
| Take a look at the front page of PornHub now. There's a
| video on there showing a man flashing strangers. Yes,
| they must be actors, but it's filmed in a way that
| suggests they're not. There's absolutely nothing there
| that would promote the idea of consent in the mind of a
| young viewer.
|
| Yes, maybe parents could watch those videos and explain
| that it's normal to fantasise and play-act about assault.
| But I'd hope that at the same time we, as adults, would
| speak with qualified therapists and try to ascertain the
| roots of our attraction to forcing our genitals onto
| unsuspecting women.
|
| Final point: PornHub has only required verification from
| uploaders since relatively recently, after dozens of
| women took them to court for hosting their rape videos
| and after it was widely publicised that there was a good
| deal of underage rape videos on there. There are still
| other popular sites such as chatpic.org or videos that
| happily allow abuse content to circulate without any
| concern for consent. That's only what's on the open web.
| int_19h wrote:
| So, would you be okay with the same kind of porn if it
| was all 100% simulated (but realistically enough to be
| indistinguishable from real stuff)?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| That's an interesting point and thank you for raising it.
|
| Indeed I would not.
|
| I think it does come down to a moral issue then, which is
| related both to the core messages communicated and to the
| audience.
|
| In terms of violent media I can think of 3 ways of
| categorising it: A) media with a moral message abut the
| use of violence (self defence, save the innocent) B)
| purely whimsical (something like Doom) and C) explicitly
| brutal material.
|
| Of those three only the first two have popular reach.
| It's easy for children to understand and it provides a
| structure for parents to use to educate their youngsters.
|
| When I compare that to pornography I feel that the stuff
| that would fall into category C is what the norm is,
| what's popular on the major channels. Therfore it takes
| on a difference socially for me.
|
| We need way way better education on what healthy sex
| looks like and why respect for women is important. But I
| honestly believe that we've passed a sort of critical
| point and do therefore support the introduction of age
| based restrictions.
| Aachen wrote:
| Then we should also ban any material that contains violence
| until there are no more homicides.
|
| Just watching, or even enacting (as in violent games),
| violence doesn't make them violent beings. Why would this
| other outlet lead to more real-world sexual assault? I
| understand why one might think it a priori (without having
| evidence either way), but we do have evidence: the reality
| we live in where, to my knowledge, it hasn't gotten more
| common despite porn having become 100x easier to get by, as
| well as the research on how virtual violence enactment
| relates to real-world violent behaviour.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| To respond to your edit here are some general statistics
| about sexual assault in the US:
| https://legaljobs.io/blog/sexual-assault-statistics/
|
| In terms of increase with the availability of
| pornography, take a look at this chart:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-
| forcible...
|
| You can see that the number of rape reports have almost
| doubled since the invention of web pornography.
| mdorazio wrote:
| > You can see that the number of rape reports have almost
| doubled since the invention of web pornography.
|
| This is the worst case of cherry picking data I've seen
| in a long time. First, if your supposition is true then
| why would the number have dropped with the rise of
| internet pornography from the late 90s all the way
| through 2012? Second, what's the per-capita rate instead
| of absolute number? Third, what other confounding factors
| are there (did the reporting method stay the same)? This
| chart tells me nothing except that something weird
| happened after 2012 and that's it.
| Aachen wrote:
| Not sure why this got a downvote. I was going to say that
| this shows only reports without estimating the proportion
| of unreported rape over time (I tried for the last ~10
| minutes to find it myself but no dice), but it's a
| constructive comment.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It got a downvote because I was speaking against
| pornography in a heavily male and internet dependant
| environment.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I didn't vote either way, but your argument assumes
| causality without considering other factors (like lower
| social stigma for reporting rape and higher social
| expectations of police responsiveness). In general, it's
| much easier to repot rape and sexual assault and have the
| report taken seriously than it was 10, 20 or more years
| ago.
|
| I think you should consider the possibility that your
| argument was deficient instead of making assumptions
| based on tropes. Communities are not monolithic and HN is
| less monolithic than most. For example, I differ strongly
| from you in not believing in censorship in the name of
| protecting youth, but I also differ from a lot of people
| here in saying that tech companies have massively failed
| to deal with the distribution of CSAM.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Yes I agree with what you're saying and thank you for
| calling it out. It's just that I've had many similar
| discussions to this in many different environments and
| it's easy to become jaded.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| This is one of the worst possible arguments I've seen on
| HN. I'm not going to address the morality issue at stake
| here, but you've fallen into one of the most common traps
| when it comes to trying to compare rates of reports over
| a period of time which is that population also grows.
| From 1990 to 2020 the US population grew from 250 million
| to 330 million. Additionally, as the chart you pointed
| out the FBI changed its definition of what constitutes
| rape in 2013, hence the rise in reported rape from that
| year onwards.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Well it depends what you mean by "contains violence."
|
| There's a world of difference between stimulated violence
| in a Mortal Kombat movie and a video of Taliban members
| playing football with a human head.
| laserlight wrote:
| > In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we
| need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what
| we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless.
|
| There's evidence that porn reduces the rate of sexual
| assaults [0].
|
| [0] Evidence Mounts: More Porn, Less Sexual Assault.
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-
| sex/2016...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Your article claims that rape levels have deceased with
| the expansion of internet pornography but that's
| statistically untrue, as they've almost doubled:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-
| forcible...
| laserlight wrote:
| Yeah, just like how US spending on science, space, and
| tech increased suicides by hanging, strangulation, and
| suffocation [0]. The article I cited talks about natural
| experiments, which examine what happens before and after
| porn was legalized.
|
| [0] Spurious Correlations.
| https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I understand that correlation is not causation but the
| claims in the article you linked me to rely on
| correlative factors that are demonstrably false.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Except despite the vast amounts of counter-evidence, people
| still are somehow dumb enough to think that hiding stuff from
| kids works (drugs, guns, porn, e.t.c).
|
| It's _super_ effective. Not perfect, but "hiding stuff from
| kids" has excellent ROI--relatively easy, and damn effective.
| Ask any parent, we do it all the time, and if it didn't work,
| we'd stop.
| rchaud wrote:
| That is something that your parents or community elders could
| have told you. Why does the state need to intervene?
|
| Phub is also a legitimate business that has commercial
| advertising interests in the US, so they're incentivized to
| play nice. There are about a million other websites that aren't
| based in North America, contain only pirated material, and
| don't care about what laws are applicable where.
| armatav wrote:
| Half the kids in this nation don't have the parental guidance
| to avoid addictions in general.
|
| The point of the US is to let the states self-regulate things
| like this.
| mind-blight wrote:
| PornHub refused to take down child porn and rape videos (not
| actors, actual assaults) on their platform for years. They
| only took them down when the victims in the videos took them
| to court and the NYT published an expose. They're in the
| middle of being sued right now, and the evidence that's
| coming to light in that case is pretty damning.
|
| Given how poorly they've behaved so far, I don't agree that
| they're incentivized to play nice.
| rchaud wrote:
| You're just making my point. This is the new and improved
| PH that's trying to go legit and abides by local laws and
| regulations.
|
| All the other sites? Not so much.
| degentracker12 wrote:
| [flagged]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Good time to remind everyone that this is what happens when
| states try to push strict age verification with harsh penalties.
| The same thing will happen if social media websites are required
| to do age verification (Reddit and HN are social media under
| these definitions)
| trc001 wrote:
| It seems that the better law would be to require sites carry some
| standardized nsfw/18+ tag or marker so they could easily be
| filtered by parental controls. Sites in violation could be fined
| if they did not include the marker.
|
| There would probably still be trivial ways to work around this
| (e.g. content blocker to remove the marker) but it would be no
| more trivial than the current vpn workaround and it would be more
| privacy preserving.
| brightball wrote:
| It's probably only a matter of time. The internet became the only
| place where age verification wasn't really a thing.
|
| I'm honestly more surprised this didn't happen 20 years ago.
| dathinab wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised that there isn't a "good enough" "is
| adult" verification browser api thingy.
|
| Where "good enough" wrt. correctness doesn't mean crypto-
| graphically pro-oven but only "you need to do some hacky things
| to circumvent it". Because IMHO for anything which doesn't also
| require to know the _exact_ identity of the user that is good
| enough.
|
| Where "good enough" wrt. privacy doesn't mean perfect, but
| means for the "age verification provider" not worse then what
| fingerprinting can do even if you have a ad-blocker and for the
| "age verification checking" website means yes or no and that's
| all they get (preferable, in worst case also the identity of
| the "age verification provider" (e.g. some organization) id but
| under no circumstances anything more than that).
|
| Where "good enough" wrt. usability means you have to use an
| verification provider of your country (because what adult means
| differs).
|
| This solution isn't perfect, it doesn't distinguish between
| different countries having different ages for being adult and
| intentionally doesn't handle other age steps like 12+, 16+
| (mainly matters for games).
|
| Honestly the only real problem I see is that in the US it can't
| be used to buy alcohol because for some reasons they don't
| allow adult to buy alcohol until 21 (but do allow them to do
| decisions way more dangerous then that). Except it's not really
| a problem as the US can define "internet adult" to be 21+,
| given that this is mainly needed for porn, buying alcohol etc.
| the US would love doing that anyway AFIK.
|
| I mean sometimes the perfect solutions is just to bothersome
| bother with it (the perfect solutions probably needs something
| like 0 knowledge proofs to preserve privacy).
| d_e_solomon wrote:
| Quite a few places do age verification by requiring a small
| nominal fee in order to get an account. Most kids under 18
| aren't going to have their own credit card or a credit card
| that their parents don't monitor.
| dathinab wrote:
| I have seen this fail very hard in practice.
|
| Because most kids can get there parents credit card number,
| and the "small nominal fee" is often too little and also
| often too cryptically booked for many parents to realize
| what is going on or to ask their bank about it.
|
| And because it's just a "small nominal fee" many kids are
| also not worried about causing any harm when doing so.
|
| Additionally with the credit card e-comerce system becoming
| more dominant in the world it becomes increasingly more
| likely for not-quite adults to have something which looks
| like a credit card for the shop (but likely acts a bit
| different behind the scene).
|
| Lastly it potentially leaks _a lot_ of private information,
| which in some contexts is okay but in others is not. Which
| is also why the small nominal fee trick works, it's often
| not just based on "only adults have a credit card" but on
| "let's use the credit card number to get a lot information
| about the user including if they are adult".
| m0rissette wrote:
| I don't know about you but I still have to verify my age from
| time to time when certain sites ask I just have to click a
| button saying I am over X years old.
| remram wrote:
| That's not "verifying" on the part of the site, that's just
| "warning".
| ben_w wrote:
| 20 years ago, Microsoft Internet Explorer had settings for
| exactly what maximum age rating of websites you wanted to be
| allowed to see. I vaguely remember one of the options being
| "full frontal nudity". Were there separate options for sex vs.
| violence, or was that just my imagination?
| dleslie wrote:
| Content Advisor, it was added in IE6.
| ben_w wrote:
| You sure it was that late? Coulda sworn I was still at
| secondary school at the time, and I left there in summer of
| 2000...
| wesleywt wrote:
| I believe it is not the responsibility of the government to
| police what your child is doing.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Some of them have taken on the responsibility of prosecuting
| vendors for selling certain material to minors. It's not what
| the child is doing; it's what the vendor is doing.
| Aachen wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. If the parents don't do it, someone
| ought to. I disagree on the part that all types of porn
| (especially by the USA level of prudishness) is necessarily
| harmful to 16-year-olds.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I believe that too... but you and I are very solidly in the
| minority.
| michalu wrote:
| Good riddance for Utah. Evil company that ruined lives of many
| people both users and the "actors" Also super pathetic to be a
| user of this - watching pixels to fool your brain to release
| dopamine to get even more pleasure than what the pleaure driven
| economy of the first world offers 24/7 already.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Wow, even HN has taken the "but think of the children" pill.
| loeg wrote:
| Certain divisive topics draw out the same crowd of verbose
| regulars.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| It's not even about children. See the research
| https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
| mkl95 wrote:
| Somewhere in Utah, an FBI agent giggles
| uncletaco wrote:
| A whole family of them, probably. The FBI loves recruiting
| Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists because of those religious
| sects' tendency to do mission work and learn less widely used
| languages. I guess it didn't hurt that both shun the use of
| intoxicants.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Wonderful news! I'd be excited to hear that they continue this to
| every red state as well!
| 0zemp2c wrote:
| [flagged]
| FrankyZunim wrote:
| All the states and then all the countries.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Shh, don't give away the plan! :'D Never interrupt your enemy
| when they're making a mistake!
| deet wrote:
| For those who think this is just a Utah peculiarity, it's not.
|
| There have been attempts in Europe:
|
| - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-porn-ban-digital-economy-...
| - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/germany-porn-laws-age-checks
|
| And its quite related to other pushes for age verification for
| social media services, as Utah and states like California have
| proposed:
|
| - https://www.axios.com/2022/09/16/california-law-websites-chi...
|
| Governments regardless of political affiliation and motivation
| seem intent on age verification, and it's easy to see where this
| could lead to, for better or worse, a less anonymous and more
| bureaucratically gated internet going forward. Whether that's
| good or not is the discussion we should be having.
| themitigating wrote:
| Proposed and enacted are a big difference. A single lawmaker
| can suggest or put forward a bill for anything. The majority
| voting to make it law is a huge barrier
| rchaud wrote:
| it's aggregated though,because data is only valuable in
| volume. Showing ID every time you visit a site is
| significantly more identifiable at the individual level.
| themitigating wrote:
| I was only replying to state the huge difference between
| proposals for a law and one passing. For example when
| judging a political part.
| vlunkr wrote:
| If you're concerned about privacy and anonymity, two huge
| strengths of the internet, it's terrible.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yeah, because the internet was free to access everyone, data
| became the background currency and advertisers figured out
| how to de-anonymize everyone years ago. That ship has sailed.
| jfarina wrote:
| Calling the internet private and anonymous is wishful
| thinking. Data is constantly owned, bought and sold.
| amelius wrote:
| I wonder if congress has thought about what would happen if
| the CCP opened their wallet.
| gigatexal wrote:
| what are all these highest-per-capita consumers of pr0n going to
| do? hahahaha
| irrational wrote:
| How do they block a state like this? Is there a directory where
| ip addresses can be looked up to see if they fall within these
| geographic boundaries? What about computers belonging to people
| visiting the state?
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| It's based on IP addresses, not computers. There are "IP
| Geolocation" services that aggregate many different databases
| to try to guess where an IP address has be allocated
| physically. See https://whatismyipaddress.com/geolocation
| seydor wrote:
| Mastercard and Visa have been doing the same for years now.
| Anyone who uploads nude photos (and this includes nudism
| websites) must also upload government id to the website (Not to
| visa/Mastercard which would be the obvious). So millions of users
| have uploaded multiple copies of their gov id to all kinds of
| websites. I m sure they are secure.
|
| This happened after some anti-sex groups went on a pr campaign.
| And this american pretentiousness is now imposed on everyone,
| worldwide.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| This all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary,
| it doesn't sound like the law actually requires checking a photo
| ID. They're treating it like some maximalist regulation that it
| isn't--it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also
|
| > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by
| their device.
|
| Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users' ages
| right now. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if they did
| _something._
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The law is:
|
| > 72 (9) "Reasonable age verification methods" means verifying
| that the person seeking to
|
| > 73 access the material is 18 years old or older by using any
| of the following methods:
|
| > 74 (a) use of a digitized information card as defined in this
| section;
|
| > 75 (b) verification through an independent, third-party age
| verification service that
|
| > 76 compares the personal information entered by the
| individual who is seeking access to the
|
| > 77 material that is available from a commercially available
| database, or aggregate of databases,
|
| > 78 that is regularly used by government agencies and
| businesses for the purpose of age and
|
| > 79 identity verification; or
|
| > 80 (c) any commercially reasonable method that relies on
| public or private transactional
|
| > 81 data to verify the age of the person attempting to access
| the material.
|
| Edit: For clarity adding the definition of "transactional data"
| - there's no clever loophole there either. Basically, data
| mine/data broker shit. Perhaps less maximalist than "just check
| the ID", but hardly what anyone would consider a meaningfully
| "minimal" solution either.
|
| > 84 (11) (a) "Transactional data" means a sequence of
| information that documents an
|
| > 85 exchange, agreement, or transfer between an individual,
| commercial entity, or third party used
|
| > 86 for the purpose of satisfying a request or event.
|
| > 87 (b) "Transactional data" includes records from mortgage,
| education, and employment
|
| > 88 entities.
| sjducb wrote:
| Use of advertising cookies to estimate the users age is
| missing.
|
| Using advertising cookies is probably the most like real
| life. You look at a user and guess their age. If they might
| be under 18 you check ID
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| "Any commercially reasonable method" is honestly about as
| minimal as I can imagine a law like this being.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Is this much different to a shop needing ID to sell a
| pornographic magazine, to avoid selling it to a minor?
| jdiff wrote:
| Don't need an ID to buy a tablet. Or a used phone. Or back
| in the day, a Nintendo DS or PSP even. I'm sure I still
| have a PSP Memory Stick around here someone with saucy
| pixel art stashed away in the bookmarks. This is a genie
| that hasn't been in a bottle since the internet was born
| and it won't be put back in one now. At least not like
| this.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't see how that relates to whether or not this is a
| maximalist approach.
| jdiff wrote:
| It relates to the question you asked, there's a
| difference between a physical store and a website, and
| the difference between uploading a copy of your ID to a
| porn website and letting a cashier glance at your ID for
| a moment is substantial. Porn is accessible on the open
| web. You can't plug all the leaks or even most of them,
| it's just not possible to put the genie back in its pre-
| internet bottle. Smut is out there and if sought, it will
| be found.
| DoItToMe81 wrote:
| Showing your ID isn't something that can be stored and
| leaked later. It also doesn't have the same stifling effect
| on speech that a normalized internet ID would have. They're
| two fundamentally different things.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Sure, but the store wouldn't keep a database keeping track
| of exactly what porn you bought.
|
| It's also like having stores check IDs when other porn is
| just floating by on the wind with regularity. Even if all
| of the major porn websites did checks there's still
| Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, Google/Bing image search,
| torrents...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > It's also like having stores check IDs when other porn
| is just floating by on the wind with regularity
|
| I suppose this does indeed happen, if you count the
| internet as the wind.
| jmull wrote:
| > This all seems a little disingenuous.
|
| Why do people always seem to use the word disingenuous
| disingenuously? :)
|
| Obviously, the number of people willing to verify their
| identity and attach it to their pornhub searches and other
| activity is close enough to zero to make no difference to
| pornhub's business.
| themitigating wrote:
| First admendment?
| DrThunder wrote:
| Amendments obviously don't apply to underage citizens.
| Otherwise, there would be no precedence for stopping children
| from buying firearms or voting.
|
| Saying this is protected speech is ridiculous.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| It's not quite that simple. Some parts of the Bill of
| Rights do apply to minors, other parts apply but in
| weakened form, etc.
| themitigating wrote:
| So then the government can arrest children without due
| process, hold them without trial, charge them with sedition
| for anti government comments?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I'm not aware of any cases holding that distribution of
| pornography to minors is protected speech, but I'd be happy
| to be educated if you have one.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Why what? Try posting a comment with more than a word or
| two if you want a meaningful discussion.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why is it not interently protected speech?
|
| If you are going to make exceptions to the first
| admendment for safety can you prove the danger
| explicitly?
|
| Why not the 2nd admendment?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| So is that a "no, I'm not aware of any cases holding that
| either"?
| brookst wrote:
| There are several precedents that say restrictions based on
| content must be evaluated using strict scrutiny, which
| means the restrictions must be as narrow as possible to
| achieve the government's interests.
|
| See for instance Ashcroft v. ACLU:
| https://www.mtsu.edu/first-
| amendment/article/377/ashcroft-v-...
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Objection, non-responsive.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Obscene material is not inherently protected speech, but as
| it's a content-based restriction, the government is still
| bound by strict scrutiny to narrowly tailor its laws to
| achieve its legitimate interest in limiting the
| distribution of pornography. Furthermore, the definition of
| obscenity (the Miller test) is actually rather narrow, and
| there are likely to be several sexual fetishes that don't
| actually qualify as obscene, and therefore protected
| speech.
| aflag wrote:
| I'm curious. What's in between nothing and checking id?
| wongarsu wrote:
| You can estimate age from images of the user's face (taken
| via webcam/front-facing camera). It wouldn't work well right
| at the threshold: you can't reliably differentiate 17 year
| olds from 18 year olds, but you can reliably keep the 10 year
| olds out. Or at least make a reasonable effort to do so,
| clever teenagers will find workarounds involving pictures or
| Halloween masks.
|
| This method doesn't seem to be allowed by the law in question
| though.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Just my own thoughts: there could theoretically be an
| identity system that simply replies "Yes/No" if someone is
| underage or not. But nothing like this exists to my
| knowledge.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Seems unsafe to telegraph to the web that a device is being
| handled by an underage user. And redundant, since that
| would probably require some intervention from the
| user/client to set up, who could already block adult
| websites on devices anyway. If they're capturing the edge
| case of parents who do nothing, but expect their kids to be
| protected when they hand them a tablet, I don't think
| there's much to do. Seems way more effective, with no
| downsides, to just communicate to parents on the govt's
| part.
|
| Adult streaming sites have the "are you 18 years of age?"
| pop-up. As far as those managing the sites are concerned
| that should be enough.
| aflag wrote:
| That service would need to be run by a third party, which
| would know your id and the fact that you are trying to
| access pornhub, wouldn't it?
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Yes, something that has access to your actual ID.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| You could have a design where encrypted requests and
| responses were routed so that the relying party (PornHub)
| new who the responding party (third party verifier) was,
| but the responding party only knew who the requesting
| party (user) was, and then only at the level of "the same
| party making the request to view", not their actual
| identity.
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| To be clear, I hate all of these ideas.
|
| But, I think Apple already does this.
| https://developer.apple.com/wallet/get-started-with-
| verify-w...
|
| "Information about past presentments -- including where,
| when, and what personal information you share -- is
| encrypted and stored only on your device. Neither the
| state issuing authority nor Apple can see your
| presentment history."
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213046
| aflag wrote:
| I see. My understanding of it is that apple gives you a
| signed letter saying that you're verified to be over 18.
| While it's possible to verify that the signed document is
| legitimate, if it's in any way tied to the person
| presenting it, you just created an id, no?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Eventually, but part of this could be delegated to
| someone who probably already knows your identity.
| belorn wrote:
| No, there are fairly well established technologies to do
| this without giving the third-party any information about
| which site is asking for authentication. The most famous
| that comes first to mind is the Kerberos protocol.
|
| An simplified example could be that I ask the third-party
| to sign a package that include my current IP address, a
| message that say "I am over 18", and a validity period.
| They sign it (after I identify myself to the third-
| party), and give me the requested signature. I then give
| this to the website and the website can verify the
| signature of the third-party. The website only know my IP
| address, the time, and what third-party service I use to
| verify my age. Third-party only know my ip address, the
| time, and that I requested a token for "I am over 18".
|
| A major drawback occur if this is only used for porn. In
| that case, the message "I am over 18" will be synonymous
| with porn use and thus giving the third-party information
| that they should not have.
| tzs wrote:
| It would be possible to design a protocol that allows
| you, a website that needs to know your age but not
| anything else about you, and a third party verification
| service that knows who you are to verify your age to the
| website without the verification service knowing who you
| are verifying your age to, and without a fourth party
| such as a government with a subpoena that lets them get
| the records of the web site and the verification service
| figure out that you have used the latter to prove your
| age to the former.
| BurnGpuBurn wrote:
| This exists, it's called IRMA. [0]
|
| The problem is, every data provider has to get on board
| first. For instance, the city you live in can verify if
| you're over eighteen. If their IT can handle setting the
| bit 'over eighteen' in the IRMA app, you can securely and
| verifiably show this bit of information, and _only_ this
| piece of information, to the party asking to verify this
| information. They have to support IRMA too though.
|
| But even then, if I'm under age and just borrow your
| phone...
|
| [0] https://privacybydesign.foundation/en/
| salawat wrote:
| Say it with me.
|
| Technology does not solve people problems. It only makes
| them worse/creates new ones in the process of (generally
| poorly) trying to partially solve them.
|
| This is a people problem.
|
| Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Personally I think these kinds of regulations are pointless and
| just needlessly destructive. If you actually start to enforce
| them you get results like in germany, where they created an
| AI/ML tool scanning public posts for lewd pictures (marked 18+
| or not, since that doesn't matter under german law) and try to
| fine the poster. Compliant sites actually do require state-
| issued ID to validate your age and grant access. It's extremely
| invasive.
|
| I think the internet access of minors is their parents
| business. This is a very reasonable approach, largely the case
| for most other aspects of law anyway, and has minimal
| externalities. Lawmakers can pass minimum standards for content
| filtering/restrictions that major device manufacturers need to
| comply with.
|
| It is also orders of magnitude more practical to ensure a "safe
| experience" with device-side restrictions compared to the
| feeble and nonsensical attempt of making the entire internet
| safe for ten year olds.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't understand - what is a reasonable regulation?
| tokai wrote:
| >Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if they did something
|
| I don't get that. Why would it be good? Why should it ever be a
| webpage's responsibility?
| hgsgm wrote:
| Why should an alcohol vendor be responsible for not selling
| booze to children?
| brookst wrote:
| Are you arguing that booze is protected speech?
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I think the comment is pretending to argue using the same
| logic as its parent comment uses, but about something the
| parent commenter would find normal and palatable, as a
| way of drawing an analogy.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Are you arguing allowing children to view sexual acts is
| legally protected? Should we open up strip clubs and
| brothels for kids?
| brookst wrote:
| I was going to type out lengthy post educating you on the
| first amendment, content-based restrictions on speech,
| strict scrutiny, and responsible parenting.
|
| But then I was struck by the absurdity of good-faith
| engagement with someone who equates a de facto ban on
| adults enjoying pornography with bordellos for children.
|
| I hope you find peace and learn to accept yourself before
| you harm too many others in the name of whatever it is
| you hate so much about your own character.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Don't gaslight me. You know good and well children aren't
| allowed the benefits of amendments. There is no ban on
| adults enjoying anything here, you're gaslighting. This
| is specifically about underage children, ya know the ones
| that legally aren't adults.
|
| Maybe you ought to realize they're more important than
| your narcissistic behaviors? I'm so sick of this current
| generation of adults not being able to grow up and put
| the next generation before their own selfish interests.
| brookst wrote:
| The ban on speech affects those who are speaking. You're
| trying to turn it around to be about who is listening.
| That would be gaslighting, which you throw around so
| triumphantly.
|
| I'm really sorry for whatever happened to you. Please
| don't perpetuate it.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Are you arguing allowing children to view sexual acts
| is legally protected?
|
| Yes. I'm pretty sure the entire reason porn is legal is
| it's considered a 1FA issue in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coa
| lit...
| pjc50 wrote:
| US free speech law is weird in that even fairly innocuous
| sexual content is "obviously not speech" for 1A purposes
| but overt threats of violence, calls for genocide, blood
| libel, holocaust denial etc are "not obscene".
| brookst wrote:
| > US free speech law is weird in that even fairly
| innocuous sexual content is "obviously not speech"
|
| This really isn't true. See the Miller test[1], and in
| that same Wikipedia article, the example of adult content
| (in Utah!) being found not obscene.
|
| Christian nationalists like to use "pornography" and
| "obscenity" interchangeably as rhetorical positioning,
| but I am hard pressed to think of a case where innocuous
| sexual content was held to be obscene and therefore not
| protected speech.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
| lesuorac wrote:
| The liquor license rules that the vendor applied for (and
| received) requires them to.
|
| 1FA issues get trumped by secondary agreements you agreed
| to.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Because it's literally illegal for children to view porn. The
| fact they've gotten away with doing nothing this long is
| ridiculous. Ultimately parents will need to be more involved
| but the idea that it's just ok to have a free for all on this
| stuff is ridiculous.
|
| There's lots of things children aren't legally allowed to
| access but I can't think of any of them that do absolutely
| nothing to meet those legal requirements. Imagine if a liquor
| store just decided it was fine to let kids come in and
| purchase liquor and you said "Why is it the liquor store's
| responsibility to not sell booze to kids?"
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >Because it's literally illegal for children to view porn
|
| Is this actually even true? So if my underage son finds a
| porn magazine in my house, it's "illegal" for him to look
| at it? That doesn't sound right.
|
| >Imagine if a liquor store just decided it was fine to let
| kids come in and purchase liquor and you said "Why is it
| the liquor store's responsibility to not sell booze to
| kids?"
|
| Imagine comparing going to a physical location with no easy
| digital trace and buying something that is basically 100%
| socially acceptable to digitally tracking what kind of
| taboo and private porn someone wants to watch.
| BurnGpuBurn wrote:
| On the other hand, _showing_ kids pornography is against
| all kinds of laws everywhere.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Yes it's true. Children can't go in a physical store and
| purchase porn anywhere.
|
| "Imagine comparing going to a physical location with no
| easy digital trace and buying something that is basically
| 100% socially acceptable to digitally tracking what kind
| of taboo and private porn someone wants to watch. "
|
| You're making excuses for allowing this. Just stop. The
| mental and physical health of children takes precedence
| over adults need to keep their fetishes "private". As if
| this stuff isn't being tracked in all sorts of ways
| already anyway. Until very very recently everyone had to
| go into a store to purchase this stuff.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >Yes it's true. Children can't go in a physical store and
| purchase porn anywhere.
|
| That's not what I asked... you said it was "literally
| illegal for children to view porn". Give me a source for
| it because I can't find one.
|
| There is a difference between SELLING porn to underage
| children, and children being able to view it. I'm talking
| about viewing it. Going to google and searching for porn
| and getting results is NOT the same as a store literally
| selling porn to kids- and since you are on a tech
| website, you obviously know that.
|
| >You're making excuses for allowing this. Just stop
|
| >The mental and physical health of children takes
| precedence over adults need to keep their fetishes
| "private"
|
| Ah the response of "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" to justify
| taking away our right to privacy. Where have I heard that
| one before?
|
| >Until very very recently everyone had to go into a store
| to purchase this stuff.
|
| Yeah, going to some random store in the 80s and buying
| what you wanted with cash where no one had any idea who
| you were, no way to track you is definitely the same as
| my license being linked to every link I click on at
| pornhub. Yup, same thing... why are you giving such a
| disingenuous argument?
| sslayer wrote:
| Well, because then we can hold someone else responsible
| instead of having any personal responsibility for our own
| actions.
| rtpg wrote:
| There are some people who believe that access to certain
| services should be age-gated. Thus follows that a web page
| offering the service should handle this age gating, in the
| same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking
| that their customers are of drinking age.
|
| In the Real World(TM) this is a fairly uncontroversial idea.
| The Internet is very wild west on these things and that has
| lead to interesting outcomes... but really age gating porn is
| in line with many things in the world.
| thehm wrote:
| Where can one buy an internet connection without being at
| least 18 years old?
|
| To use your analogy, it is parents who are paying for the
| alcohol and then leaving it in a place where it is easy for
| their children to access. Responsible parents either teach
| their children about appropriate alcohol use or make it
| difficult to access, or both.
| dagw wrote:
| _Where can one buy an internet connection without being
| at least 18 years old?_
|
| Most cities are full of places offering free internet
| connections to anybody in the vicinity.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Where can one buy an internet connection without being
| at least 18 years old?
|
| Prepaid phone cards are a thing.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| But usually coupled to legally-mandated identity (and
| age, but it might not be 18) verification so you have an
| address to send the cops to when someone calls in a bomb
| threat.
| thehm wrote:
| Where I live, they can only legally be sold to people >=
| 18 years old. Maybe that should be more commonplace?
| gabereiser wrote:
| We've learned that parents aren't responsible in the USA.
| This might change with the parents on trial for the teen
| shooter recently but ultimately up to this point, unless
| it's physical neglect, the parents delegate to the
| schools and then get upset when their kids are taught
| non-racist ideologies. Or they force the school board to
| ban/burn books like it's nazi germany.
| tokai wrote:
| Is the Real World only the USA? Cause where I'm from its
| not illegal for a sub 18 year old to buy a porn mag in a
| kiosk.
| coldpie wrote:
| The analogy breaks down when you remember that everything
| you do on a networked computer is effectively public
| information. In a physical store, you can show the clerk
| your ID, they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret
| item", and then forget your name & face the instant they
| move to the next customer. But to do the same thing online,
| you are associating your name & face with the "secret item"
| to literally everyone on the planet for the rest of
| eternity. The calculus changes.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > In a physical store, you can show the clerk your ID,
| they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret item",
| and then forget your name & face the instant they move to
| the next customer.
|
| This is not exactly correct. The clerk might, but not the
| database the card was scanned into. Depending on the
| secret item such as certain OTC medications, alcohol,
| tobacco, the information is not forgotten but kept for an
| extended time, and is stored and correlated in a
| centralized DB.
| least wrote:
| This depends on what you're buying and where. In Virginia
| we have an ABC (Alcholic Beverage Control) which is the
| only place you can buy spirits. They _do_ scan your ID.
| The grocery store does not. The restaurants do not. The
| porn shops presumably do not, either. Basically the only
| other time might be to buy something like sudafed at a
| pharmacy, but I haven 't done so recently enough to know
| if that's actually scanned at all, either.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > buy something like sudafed at a pharmacy
|
| Anything with pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and
| phenylpropanolamine requires scanning by US federal
| mandate.
|
| It is done so the government can capture it across the
| nation.
|
| I am just saying that there are things that already have
| the requirements of data collection & retention both at
| Federal and State level in the USA.
| least wrote:
| > Thus follows that a web page offering the service should
| handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol
| sellers are responsible for checking that their customers
| are of drinking age.
|
| There's no _practical_ way to check ID on the web. In your
| "Real World" the vast majority of the time checking ID is
| just some person that works for an establishment looks at a
| little plastic card with your photo on it and checks to
| make sure the birthday is before a certain date, then they
| hand it back to you. To do something like this online would
| require something much more intrusive to personal privacy
| and adds another pointless complicated technological
| solution when a much more practical solution exists. That
| solution being parental controls.
| rtpg wrote:
| Cell phone operators offering age verification is an
| actual real thing that exists right now in Japan. No ID
| handover requires. You need to make a user ID (and have a
| cell phone).
|
| The impossible becomes possible real quickly when
| businesses decide they need it to move forward.
| coldpie wrote:
| So your proposal is that every access to porn must be
| forever associated with your personal phone number?
| rtpg wrote:
| Well... if you pay for this stuff, you're already having
| a credit card involved (for example. Maybe you're buying
| gift cards, and age gating can happen there!). If you're
| not.... maybe the decimation of free porn is not a bad
| thing for the universe.
|
| I do believe in privacy rights, but... free porn just
| doesn't feel like a must-exist thing in the sense we are
| all talking about.
|
| I do think that there's a universe where self-governance
| sort of resolves these problems. Many industries have
| done this! In a universe where basically you needed a
| credit card to access this stuff ~always, this law would
| likely not exist.
| least wrote:
| > I do believe in privacy rights, but... free porn just
| doesn't feel like a must-exist thing in the sense we are
| all talking about.
|
| In other words, you don't actually believe in privacy
| rights because all it takes is one flimsy reason that you
| happen to, if not agree with, don't really find
| objectionable to violate them. Is the harm caused by
| anyone under arbitrary age seeing porn harmful enough to
| violate everyone's right to privacy, even when there are
| already existing solutions to help prevent minors from
| accessing pornography?
|
| Parental controls exist. Tools to block websites like
| pornhub or any other porn website exist already. You
| might say that it's too easy to circumvent parental
| controls. I'd say that it's just as easy to circumvent ID
| requirements, so if your goal is to actually protect
| children from pornography, it's not going to be anymore
| effective than current access controls.
| arp242 wrote:
| I remember trying to buy some video games when I was a kid,
| and they wouldn't sell it to me because it was rated as 15+
| and I wasn't 15. People would also check ages at movie
| theatres; I had some trouble getting in to Jurassic Park
| with my friend but we did manage, and also regretted it as
| I was scared witless for months, demonstrating that these
| age limits are perhaps not entirely nonsense.
|
| A lot of people seem to have forgotten what the world was
| like 25 years ago.
| coldpie wrote:
| The trouble for most people isn't age verification per
| se, it's the knock-on effects from that. Which do you
| prefer:
|
| 1) No age verification, or
|
| 2) Every access to online adult content is forever
| publicly associated with your personal information?
|
| I agree neither is ideal, but I think 1 is better than 2.
| arp242 wrote:
| I don't think 1 and 2 are the only possible options. The
| thing is that thus far there hasn't been much incentive
| to develop technology that can verify people's age or
| other aspects of their identity in a privacy-friendly
| way, because the internet hasn't really needed it before.
|
| We should start by thinking about what we want to do: do
| we want to age-gate pornography? If so, why? If not, why
| not? And if we don't age-gate online pornography at all
| does that also mean a 10-year old can just walk in to a
| sex shop, live sex show, or BDSM club? Once we figured
| out some answers to that (and more) we can start thinking
| about the how of it all, keeping in mind that things like
| "access to online adult content is forever publicly
| associated with your personal information" would be
| undesirable.
|
| I don't think "well, it's kinda hard so _[throw up and
| hands and give up]_ " is really a good way forward. I
| don't have complete answers for all of this either, but I
| feel a number of people here are far too dismissive about
| this. At this point we - the broader "hacker/IT
| community" - can either be part of the conversation or
| sideline ourselves by dismissing it all.
| coldpie wrote:
| There could be some future in which computer security
| actually exists, but I just don't see our industry going
| in that direction right now. In any case, that technology
| doesn't exist _now_ so the options today, with this law
| in effect, are as I stated.
| arp242 wrote:
| Some systems do exists though, for example IRMA:
| https://privacybydesign.foundation/irma-explanation/ - I
| do think IRMA suffers from some issues, but options do
| exist.
|
| If there are no laws then there is no pressure to create
| technology, and if there's no technology we can't create
| good laws. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing innit?
| It's hard to tell where the future will go, but I will
| bet we will see more of these kind off laws passed around
| the world.
| coldpie wrote:
| No, these systems do not and cannot exist today. There is
| no such thing as computer security[1]. We may get there
| some day, decades from now. But today, if your data is on
| a networked computer, it should be treated as public.
|
| [1] Every day there is a new headline proving this. Here
| is today's: https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2023/05/t-mob...
| kroltan wrote:
| The controversiality is exactly that in the Real World(TM)
| it's possible to either anonymously verify a certain age
| (by trivial visual inspection in most cases) or handle it
| in a way that does not require the potential storage of
| information (Handing - or better, showing - a cashier your
| ID doesn't mean they can take a photo of it and store for
| however many months)
|
| Meanwhile, back on Teh Interwebz, the only way we have
| right now of verifying age is by uploading photos, or
| equivalent information, of the identification document,
| which could be intercepted, stored, or otherwise pilfered
| with no further indication.
|
| I think there was someone proposing a cryptography-based
| way of proving "yes, this visitor has access to a non-minor
| identity", but that requires some sort of government (or
| similar) service that could also log incidental
| information, and would require some sort of digital
| identity service (for example gov.br here in Brazil):
| Service generates a random token, user gives token to
| identity service using their authentication, identity
| service replies with the token signed with a key whose
| public part the website knows.
|
| This would be "better", in the sense of you don't have to
| provide any actual identifying information to arbitrary
| websites, but very bad because now the government can log
| all age-check attempts. There is probably some more
| complicated solution to that, but it goes beyond me. In the
| meantime, my opinion is that online age checks are dumb,
| easily bypassed, and possibly dangerous. Until we find a
| proper solution, just educate yo kids properly.
|
| Friendly reminder that criminals don't have to obey laws,
| so actually dangerous websites (be it just psychologically,
| like I don't know, gore, to actual illegal things) won't be
| so kind as to implement an age check themselves anyways. If
| you want the minor you're responsible over to not view
| harmful content, teach them about the internet and have a
| healthy relationship with them so they trust you in the
| eventuality they see something disturbing.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| What ways are there to verify age online other than photo IDs?
| Real question, I am not familiar with this area.
|
| When I google, I find several third-party "age verification as
| a service" services. Their marketing isn't always clear about
| what they actually do, but I think they all look like they get
| photo ID (not sure if they do anything to try to confirm the
| person sending the ID is that person). Their pricing is also
| not generally public.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Government SSO / 2FA, similar to MitID / NemID in Denmark.
|
| Could you make a SSO where the website owner just gets a true
| / false bool back from the SSO? :thinking:
| rtpg wrote:
| One example: in Japan cell phone operators provide a
| mechanism by which you can OAuth into their system, and then
| they will tell you whether the user is over 18 or not. This
| lets Line age-restrict "become friends with random people
| online" functionality.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| That doesn't scale well. How does it expand to PCs,
| SmartTVs, tablets, games consoles, etc?
| rtpg wrote:
| User account associated to a phone number is a common
| tactic. Phone numbers serving as a proxy for identity is
| more and more of a thing.
|
| People might talk about burner phones, but many
| localities never really had burner phones in the first
| place (Japan doesn't give a phone number on travel SIMs,
| there's "no way" to have a phone number without getting
| your ID checked somewhere), and other localities are
| tightening the grip on this.
|
| It's not a universally nice and open solution. But it's
| probably one most markets will bear
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| That's interesting, and I have some questions about it. But
| doesn't currently seem to be available for complying with
| the Utah law. I was interested in ways that would be
| practical for pornhub to use, operating not just in Japan,
| and especially in the USA. The GP's comment made me wonder
| if they had some in mind, that could be used to comply with
| the Utah law.
| brookst wrote:
| So having read the law, what form of age verification do you
| thunk would allow pornhub to operate legally in Utah?
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if they did something.
|
| If it were instead illegal for sites to check for your ID
| outside of a handful of circumstances, that would be much
| preferable. Last thing we need is more privacy invasions on the
| web. Unfortunately, things are going in the wrong direction,
| both from private interests and from newer govt regulations.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Not to mention that "identifying users by their device" is the
| wet dream of BigTech - it's like a "hardware cookie" that can
| track you anywhere you go on the internet. (And that's exactly
| why BigTech like Microsoft, Google, Apple etc. are already
| promoting user authentication by device, as the first step
| towards this).
| armatav wrote:
| It's funny to see half of HN clutch pearls when a segment of
| society doesn't want their kids addicted to digital porn.
|
| No one's stopping you; it's to stop kids from ramping up what
| might be the most societally acceptable hardcore addiction.
|
| There are elected representatives that push for these changes,
| this is how the society in the US is structured. If you want a
| different set of rules, get elected or change states.
| [deleted]
| monetus wrote:
| _It's funny to see half of HN clutch pearls when a segment of
| society doesn't want their kids addicted to digital porn._
|
| This is a disenguine, bad faith take on a swathe of commenters,
| not half of hn. Please don't add to flame wars.
| armatav wrote:
| Not at all.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| In the old days parents would have this responsibility. And this
| doesn't necessarily mean that the parents would prohibit it! But
| I guess if parents aren't parenting the way you want them to, you
| need to pass a law. (which I disagree with)
| mc32 wrote:
| Before, parents oversaw things in the home and strangers/other
| parents extended that reach to the streets and the public
| square. These days parents barely have control over things at
| home due to how things can be circumvented, never mind outside
| the home.
|
| It'd be like comparing an old style police stakeout and telling
| everyone surveillance is no different today because it's just
| the police (ignoring the part where technology changes the
| calculus).
| taylodl wrote:
| An identity provider can make verified age one of the claims on
| an OAuth token. It removes anonymity, but at least you don't have
| to provide your personal details to everybody on the internet
| demanding age verification. You provide those details to your
| trusted identity provider, they provide the claim of your age to
| the website.
|
| With that in place we can easily make beer, liquor, marijuana and
| tobacco sales on the internet possible! And porn too, I guess.
| bewo001 wrote:
| More interesting data for the identity provider.. Leaving the
| filtering to the client side is a less intrusive method and
| puts the responsibility into the hands of parents (or work
| places). rtalabel.org proposes simple well-known meta tags to
| simplify this filtering.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I support the idea of shifting this to the client side, but
| RTA seems to be going about it in a rather bizarre way:
|
| > Hit the SELECT TAG button, then copy and paste this META
| tag into the header section of every page on your site that
| includes content inappropriate for minors:
|
| > <meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
| />
|
| So far so good...
|
| > by using the label you signify that you agree to our TERMS
| AND CONDITIONS.
|
| ...uh, what?
|
| I'd rather support a different implementation released as an
| open standard.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Checkbox for "I don't want to view or reply to comments by
| under 18s" for websites would be a plus. Think web will get
| somewhat better when adults stop getting into arguments with
| kids without knowing it. Wouldn't mind even more granularity,
| i.e. I don't want to interact with with anyone +/-10 my age.
|
| Queue the full Tinderization of online interaction, I only want
| to see coments from X race, Y age, Z height with following list
| of orientations and identitites.
| bloak wrote:
| With physical goods it's probably enough to check the age of
| the person taking delivery. Presumably the people who deliver
| groceries know what to do if the groceries include a crate of
| beer and the person who opens the door looks as if they might
| be under 18. Presumably they ask to see a driving licence or
| for someone older to come to the door. Or the crate of beer
| gets sadly removed from the order and the teenager's father is
| disappointed when he gets back from his evening walk.
| basisword wrote:
| Where are you based? I can purchase alcohol from Amazon UK with
| no obvious age checks. Deliveroo require that riders verify
| your age but in reality they just ask you to type it in. And
| the major grocery stores deliver alcohol without any obvious
| checking too. I imagine teenage drinking is much easier these
| days thanks to the above :)
| loeg wrote:
| Enforcement is much more strict in the states, generally. It
| does vary some state to state.
| jen20 wrote:
| > I imagine teenage drinking is much easier these days thanks
| to the above
|
| When I was in (secondary) school in the UK, we could get
| served beer in the pub at lunchtime while wearing school
| uniform! Doesn't get much easier than that!
| dmje wrote:
| We waited for the French Exchange kids to be staying with
| us. They all looked about 25 when we were all 15. They were
| always happy to buy our booze for us :-)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| In Holland beer and wine was allowed from 16 years of age
| and only spirits were 18+. Unfortunately a recent
| conservative government switched it all to 18+.
|
| I'm much older but I think 16 is old enough for a beer. I
| didn't when I were that age but I don't begrudge them their
| beer.
|
| And it's not like the law will stop it from happening
| anyway.
| crmd wrote:
| People in the US seem to be at higher risk than Europeans
| of catastrophic problem drinking (where alcohol use leads
| to a loss of employment, housing, marriage / social
| connections, etc).
|
| I have seen this with several European friends who
| relocated to the US and found their relationship with
| alcohol turning dark.
|
| My personal theory is that life in the states may be on
| average more stressful than in Europe, perhaps due to
| lack of healthcare, at-will employment, etc., and this
| life pressure causes people here to be more at risk of
| self-medication problem drinking.
| xdennis wrote:
| But God forbid you try to buy a kitchen knife! It used to be
| that you had to show ID at delivery, but now Amazon requires
| adding ID before the purchase.
| r00fus wrote:
| Not in my state (CA). I had kitchen knives delivered by
| Amazon with no additional checks/verification.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Are you ordering from Amazon UK? If not, then this isn't
| relevant.
| mkoryak wrote:
| About a month ago I had my groceries delivered from
| Wholefoods and the deliver driver carded me for some non-
| alcoholic beer I had purchased. I tried explaining to him
| that he didn't have to do that, but he wouldn't unload my
| groceries until I let him scan my ID.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Wait they actually scan your ID? Or did you mean visually
| 'scan' it
| bragr wrote:
| Actually scan. I sometimes get beer via door dash, and
| they quickly verify your age by scanning the barcode on
| your ID. It pops up green so fast that at least some of
| the verification must be local to the phone, but I'm sure
| some data gets sent back. But I had to upload my ID to
| Door Dash the first time, so incremental scans don't
| really give them anything new.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I had this a lot during the pandemic lockdown, for
| groceries and takeout... things that weren't even liquid or
| food were mislabeled in some database as alcohol, requiring
| stressful social interaction when the whole point was no
| contact dropoff. Crazy how people aren't allowed to use
| common sense but have to follow an apps instructions.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| It's really not that crazy. "allowed to use common sense"
| is a loophole you could drive a semi truck through.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Good, I don't want to live in an open-air prison where
| everything has to be approved by some administrator.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Okay, so advocate for repealing laws that age-restrict
| sales of alcohol, tobacco, etc. I don't think you'll find
| much support for your position, and until you do the
| company has a duty to do basic due diligence to not break
| the law.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| False dichotomy. Basic due diligence can include asking
| the obviously young if they're old enough and does not
| need to be so heavily bureaucratized or strictly
| regulated. I suggest that restricting tobacco advertising
| and imposing high taxes on tobacco sales has done far
| more to limit youth consumption than any number of ID
| checks and retail license policing.
|
| Most other developed countries get by just fine with a
| much more relaxed attitude. Demanding identification and
| legal documentation for every little thing is excessive
| and imposes a compliance burden on everyone. It's fair in
| the sense of being non-discriminatory, but unfair in the
| sense that it creates a massive aggregate burden, reduces
| privacy, and institutes authoritarian presumptions.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| This happens to me at self-checkout at Safeway. I guess I
| can get somebody to come and check my ID, but seems
| unnecessary.
| 13of40 wrote:
| Not sure if it's everywhere yet, but where I live, QFC
| and Fred Meyer have started scanning IDs for every
| alcohol purchase, which is a bit disturbing because that
| block of data on the back of your ID has a lot more than
| your birthday on it. I have a passport card that doesn't
| scan but is still valid ID, but I wonder if there's any
| legal issue with printing your own barcode that says
| "mind your own business" or something and sticking it on
| there.
| ta988 wrote:
| Nobody will check. As long as their API replies {valid:
| true}
| taylodl wrote:
| Right? Why can't you scan your ID and then be prompted
| what information to share with the system, like age? I
| scan my ID, the system asks to retrieve age information,
| it retrieves it, now I can proceed to scan my alcohol. No
| human interaction required.
|
| If the person manning the self-checkout operations thinks
| you look awfully young to be buying alcohol then they can
| always demand to see your ID.
|
| Simple.
| baristavibes wrote:
| No way to check you're actually the person on the ID this
| way
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Lots of places have mandatory ID checks regardless of
| appearance.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Stop complying with them. If they won't sell to you, take
| your business elsewhere and tell them why. If they whine
| about laws tell them to hire better lobbyists.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Eliminating the discretion of a cashier is not a bad
| thing. It harms no one and makes their job easier.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It harms me by making me ask permission of strangers to
| eat and drink what I choose. I don't think telling people
| to operate as mindless robots makes their job easier.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The permission is granted by your government. Either move
| to a libertarian paradise where 10 year olds can drink or
| accept that a merchant will apply measures to protect
| their liquor license.
|
| Far more harmful is self-checkout without a discount for
| free labor or treating your customers like criminals when
| they leave the store with their own property.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I'm saying that regulatory requirements should be less
| strict, so that retailers are not turned into an
| extension of the government. Many developed countries
| establish a minimum age for alcohol purchase but don't
| build unwieldy infrastructures around it, relying instead
| on the aggregate judgement of their populace.
|
| You seem to have missed the part where I _do not want_ to
| ask permission of the government for every little thing.
| I 'm well into middle age and do not appreciate having to
| seek governmental approval for what I consume. I am fine
| with some products like alcohol being subjected to taxes
| to balance out negative externalities. I am not fine with
| the idea of showing my papers on demand.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > I can purchase alcohol from Amazon UK with no obvious age
| checks
|
| Using your UK credit card? If so, that's an age check in
| itself.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Here's a common UK bank (well, building society
| technically) that has a Visa debit card for their kids
| account from 11 and up:
| https://www.nationwide.co.uk/current-accounts/flexone/
| jfk13 wrote:
| Yes, my kids had debit cards too. But not _credit_ cards;
| those have a minimum age of 18.
| throwaway60607 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ChrisRR wrote:
| From your comments it seem you're in Germany where the
| legal drinking age is 16, so it's not surprising
| throwaway60607 wrote:
| Not in Germany, just nearby. The legal drinking age where
| I live is 18.
| conro1108 wrote:
| In the Bay Area I'm also easily able to order alcohol on all
| the big delivery services, but they all seem pretty
| consistent about scanning your ID for age verification before
| they drop it off.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > but at least you don't have to provide your personal details
| to everybody on the internet demanding age verification.
|
| I think some of the aim of these bills is to shame people into
| not consuming vice.
| solarmist wrote:
| More than some I'd guess.
|
| If they though they'd get away with it they would mandate
| public lists of who does these things.
| [deleted]
| hellojesus wrote:
| Yes, but as of now there is no punishment for letting
| others borrow your oauth token. So just publish your oauth
| and let anyone use it to sign up for services.
|
| It may get tricky if sites limit registration to unique
| keys, but so long as it's purely checking with a third
| party and not storing your info, they're shouldn't be a way
| to validate an id is used more than once.
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| Denmark has a system like this, MitID, it support OAuth2 and
| OpenID Connect, so here it should be possible. The US doesn't
| have a country wide system for identification only, not that I
| know of at least. I can understand companies, like PornHub, not
| wanting to pay along, unless the government provides a system
| for age verification. Still it would also be a lot of work to
| integrate with every single government ID scheme around the
| world.
|
| Also they normally aren't free to use, each query normally cost
| money, why would the porn sites want to pay for a service they
| didn't want anyway.
|
| Another issue with these system: They are high value target and
| they tend to be just as crashy as other government IT projects.
| theptip wrote:
| +1 for teaching lawmakers how to achieve their goals at the
| protocol layer.
|
| Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent was
| a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. This is the
| Obviously Correct solution, they just needed to work with
| browser vendors to make it happen.
|
| I'd rather you have websites support a generic
| cryptographically-secure claim schema for ages (implementable
| in any signed token the browser can emit) than actually check
| everyone's identity.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent
| was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers. This is the
| Obviously Correct solution, they just needed to work with
| browser vendors to make it happen._
|
| This is a great idea, and it doesn't seem like we need
| lawmakers to do anything about it. If browsers implemented
| this, websites could start using it right?
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| They would never do this, because, cookie consent only
| "works" by making it much harder to opt out than to just
| "accept all"
| drdaeman wrote:
| > Imagine how much better the web would be if cookie consent
| was a browser protocol on top of HTTP headers.
|
| Imagine how much better the web would be if the browsers
| would have a built-in ability to accept or reject cookies on
| a per-site basis... oh, wait, they do. And had that since
| forever (or at least IE5). Almost no one used that because it
| was obnoxious to have a popup on every website. So browser
| vendors moved those settings to the farthest corners of the
| most obscure configuration dialogs... and then the
| politicians brought those prompts back (but in a crappy, non-
| standardized, not-even-working way).
| djha-skin wrote:
| A much better solution than was suggested by PornHub:
|
| > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by
| their device.
|
| Fingerprinting is not and should not be the sanctioned way of
| identifying people. On the engineering side, it is a horrible
| hack. On the ethical side, it is much worse to ( _attempt_ to)
| fingerprint since it tells PornHub waaay more than just age.
| [deleted]
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Yeah I really did not understand what they were suggesting
| with "device verification" but it seemed both ineffective and
| likely to provide them with far more data than needed.
| [deleted]
| proprietario wrote:
| >Fingerprinting is not and should not be the sanctioned way
| of identifying people.
|
| If I understood PornHubs proposal correctly they want to only
| provide the content if your browser does not send a "Child-
| Mode" flag or something. Given that parents should introduce
| children to their first mobile devices and guide them,
| setting this flag seems not to be so hard. Just set at
| account creation "minor: true" and done, or am I missing
| something?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| c2h5oh wrote:
| I'm more curious HOW they are doing it.
|
| I've looked into this recently and detecting state you are in
| without having access to your location data had just under 50%
| error rate.
| YPPH wrote:
| Presumably they are using some form of IP address geolocation. If
| that's as inaccurate in the USA as it is in Australia, they're
| going to have problems - a lot of the time it puts me in the
| wrong State.
| Arnt wrote:
| "They're going to have a problem" -- for whom is that a
| problem?
|
| Porhub made the best reasonable effort. The ISPs supplied
| inaccurate data and are in the jurisdiction, but aren't
| required to supply anything at all AFAICT. Who has a problem?
| tivert wrote:
| > Porhub made the best reasonable effort. The ISPs supplied
| inaccurate data and are in the jurisdiction, but aren't
| required to supply anything at all AFAICT. Who has a problem?
|
| Given the known problems with IP geo-location, I don't think
| this would count as "the best reasonable effort." Unless you
| interpret "reasonable" to mean "half-ass."
| tiagod wrote:
| Usually it's Maxmind supplying the data. They might get it
| from ISPs, but not necessarily.
| Arnt wrote:
| Mutatis mutandis. ISPs aren't required by law to supply
| accurate geolocation AFAICT, but neither are you, neither
| am I, and neither is the company in the building next to
| your office.
| doitLP wrote:
| It's much better in the US than in Australia, where there are
| only a few IP exit points for the whole country. It largely has
| to do with ISP. My IP resolves to a few feet in front of my
| house.
| chefandy wrote:
| My home ISP usually resolves to within 15 miles but my mobile
| often resolves to NYC which is across two state borders and
| almost 150 miles away. If I'm looking for something at Home
| Depot or whatnot it always sets my store location to
| Manhattan. Probably good for confusing trackers.
| OoOOo wrote:
| Exactly
| chefandy wrote:
| Let's just hope NYC doesn't make any similarly draconian
| web laws.
| xxs wrote:
| Mobile phones cannot be reliably geo-located by IP as that
| depends on the datacenter serving them, which can easily be out
| of state. Usually the only half reliable part is the country
| which doesn't work in Europe when it comes to roaming (it uses
| the host country regardless the location).
| fullstop wrote:
| On websites which use geolocation to select a local store
| (home depot), mine are frequently several hundreds of miles
| away when I'm on my phone.
| [deleted]
| brookst wrote:
| The law is more about intent than technical compliance. Both
| are important, but the most important thing is demonstrating
| good faith efforts to comply.
|
| It's a very different world from technology, where technical
| compliance is more or less the same thing as policy
| compliance.
| hgsgm wrote:
| What is "technology policy compliance"?
|
| Technology is technical. Policy is political.
| brookst wrote:
| You quoted something I didn't say?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's probably fine. Perhaps the point is to make it more
| clear to lawmakers that you can't build a Great Salt Lake
| Firewall.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Sure you could, you could mandate providers in the state give
| accurate geolocation data with some sort of lookup service
| and standard. I'm not saying it's a good idea but providers
| could certainly do it. They provide the physical
| infrastructure, and I assume have to deal with understanding
| state boundaries, laws, taxes etc already on a per customer
| basis when it comes to near state border cases.
|
| I guess people providing wifi near the border could get
| complex but you could pass that responsibility to whomever
| owns the physical line and where it terminates. Satellite
| might be a little difficult.
|
| But I'm not entirely sure we _should_ do it just because it
| _could_ be done.
| wang_li wrote:
| Since they just passed a law requiring real age verification,
| if you're trying to make some point about firewalls you're
| making the wrong point.
| rain1 wrote:
| thanks for clarifying that "pornhub" is an adult website
| Mashimo wrote:
| No problem, mate.
| tyingq wrote:
| Related, from 11 hours ago, 27 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35781637
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| This law is so nonsensical. There is no way to block all the porn
| in the world behind "legitimate and law-abiding" porn providers.
| The right way to approach this problem (if you even see it as a
| problem) is to filter on the device.
|
| Just make content tagging mandatory and make a device level
| filter that can be turned on by parents and locked with a
| password.
|
| Done.
| wunderland wrote:
| The US is also planning a law that would make it illegal to use
| VPNs to skirt laws like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban...
| GalenErso wrote:
| There are countless programmers, from self taught amateurs to
| professional SWEs, white hats, grey hats and black hats, who
| would immediately jump at the opportunity to create stronger
| VPNs, mirror sites, Tor nodes, and other tools to allow the
| public to bypass these restrictions. Trying to control the
| Internet in America is a losing proposition, for better or
| worse.
| marvin wrote:
| That _is_ a consolation, but only a small one when the state
| violence apparatus is standing by to punish those who use
| them. It must never be illegal in the first place.
| Thiez wrote:
| You're proposing a technical solution to a political problem.
| It doesn't work, this should be fixed at the source.
| throwaway60607 wrote:
| How exactly it doesn't work? Not even China has been able
| to make their Great Firewall resilient to stuff like VPNs.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| China won that battle.
|
| If only 0.01% of the population has the technical
| saviness to bypass the Great Firewall, then they've
| succeed beyond their wildest optimism. No one cares about
| the few exceptions. If those people speak out to anyone
| about how they're able to get around it... then guess
| what happens? And if they just shut up and keep it to
| themselves, that's a good outcome too.
|
| You're chuckling "but it's not 100%" when they might have
| been satisfied with 85%. Joke's on you.
| mcny wrote:
| > How exactly it doesn't work? Not even China has been
| able to make their Great Firewall resilient to stuff like
| VPNs.
|
| I don't have any inside information, but my uninformed
| guess is that this is by design or at least tolerated to
| some extent. You don't want a watertight VPN because it
| stifles commerce.
|
| China PR could pull a Singapore and impose the kind of
| punishment for using VPN that Singapore does for hard
| drugs. I have a friend from Texas who lives in China PR
| and regularly uploads to YouTube. Nothing political, he
| is talking about living and working as a teacher, so he
| isn't doing anything controversial but in theory what he
| is doing is unlawful by China PR laws, right?
| dirtyid wrote:
| Securitized regions like XinJiang will occasionally lock
| phones (including foreigners) with VPN installed, need to
| goto police station to unlock phone after uninstalling
| VPN apps. That's basically hardcore VPN/GFW enforcement
| mode.
|
| Broadly PRC GFW is functionally VPN paywall for foreign
| content so most PRC nationals default to consuming
| media/narratives within the wall. TBH, apart from
| dissidents, researchers etc, in my experience, very few
| VPN users jump wall for foreign news, like exposure might
| be incidental due to being shared on timeline, but most
| PRC nationals jump wall for porn, business and lols.
| Plenty of foreign news gets filtered to domestic PRC net
| via diasphora who reverse VPN and post content back into
| PRC net - lots of foreign/western "propaganda" makes it's
| way in PRC, it's just rate limited to point where
| influence is limited, or censored if it ever gets legs.
|
| In terms of regulations: VPN allowed for commerce,
| enforcement mostly against businesses who don't
| register/get approval using sanctioned VPNs. Individuals
| _generally_ free to use - there aren't clear laws yet
| against individual use, currently regulations target
| operators. 99% of VPN enforcement is at this level. Few
| individuals (outside XinJiang/Tibet) and no foreigners as
| far as I'm aware of have gotten in shit for VPN. For
| nationals who got in shit, it's what they do with VPN
| (coordinating with foreign forces etc), not use itself.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| A rubber hose firewall doesn't need to be completely
| resilient to VPNs, in fact I imagine they would like a
| steady supply of people to make an example of.
| meesles wrote:
| China is a poor example if you're trying to say that
| people can circumvent political technology decisions. The
| firewall works for 90%+ of their population and allows
| them to present versions of events that don't align with
| the rest of the world. That can happen in the US as well,
| and we already know there's organizations that are
| willing to do it.
| philwelch wrote:
| You don't need a firewall to present versions of events
| that don't align with the rest of the world. We've
| managed to do that with a completely unfiltered internet
| for years now.
| splitstud wrote:
| [dead]
| rchaud wrote:
| China doesn't need 100% impermeability. As long as it
| circumvents _most_ people from going outside the
| firewall, the job is done.
|
| Think of it in terms of adblocking. You and I know all
| the tricks, but Google's bottom line suggests most people
| do not, and don't seem to mind. Similarly, the Great
| Firewall is tolerated because it doesn't block the things
| that are necessary for living life in China.
| roamerz wrote:
| >How exactly doesn't this work
|
| I'll show you: The next logical step would be to make it
| a crime of some sort to as a user attempt to evade the
| law. Maybe it's even a felony to persuade folks to not to
| try. But the reality is they made the law just for
| political points and it never gets enforced it's just
| there sitting on the books. Now years go on and you have
| been using vpn's to evade the restrictions. Now 10 years
| later you decide to run for President and. a whole bunch
| of establishment politicians hate you for whatever
| reason. Now all of a sudden this phrase is really
| relevant: Show me a man and I'll show you a crime.
|
| That is why it needs fixing at the source.
| rbanffy wrote:
| A block doesn't need to be completely effective as to
| prevent violations - all it needs is to provide enough
| data to authorities so they can make sure you don't do it
| too often.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Or let people violate the law so that you can selectively
| enforce it on the people that you want to. "For my
| friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" - Oscar
| Benavides
| rbanffy wrote:
| Oh yes. That's also on the playbook of every
| authoritarian.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Yeah. I lock my front door at night, despite it being
| perfect.
|
| This is such a blindspot for '24/7 engineer mindset'
| people. And, in a professional context, things like this
| serve as a great litmus test for if someone is capable
| and geared to look at things at a bigger-picture level
| instead of just 'computer problems'.
|
| ...not to equate looking at porn with getting
| burglarised. This is obviously BS.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| The point of banning stuff on the Internet is not to censor
| stuff, it's to make the stuff the government doesn't like
| unmonetizable.
|
| So VPNs aren't a "bypass" or a loophole, they're the desired
| outcome of these laws.
| emodendroket wrote:
| This is something we like to tell ourselves but they can do a
| whole lot, especially if the sites in question are expensive
| to host.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| This is a huge problem, because it's another example of
| turning a wide swath of humanity into criminals for doing
| relatively normal things that should be allowed.
|
| Of course they won't be able to enforce this most of the
| time. But if you end up in their sights for any reason, they
| may then notice you using a VPN and use that information to
| legally blackmail you.
|
| Usually this goes with making the punishment very harsh: A
| stolen MP3 on your hard drive? 20-to-life unless you take a
| plea bargain down to 2 years and turn in 3 friends as well.
| Same deal now with VPNs.
| rayiner wrote:
| I would have agreed with you 20 years ago. But I think today,
| large scale internet censorship would be feasible. My wife
| and I marvel at her (much younger) Gen Z siblings' computer
| illiteracy. These kids are the iPad/walled garden generation.
| These laws would be effective to keep Internet porn out of
| the hands of a large majority of younger people. That's
| especially true because so many kids rely on phones and
| iPads, so governments can easily control VPN apps and things
| like that by leaning on Apple and Google.
|
| It obviously won't keep information from getting out. But
| that's not the purpose of things like anti-porn laws.
| Dramatically curtailing prevalence and access is sufficient.
| int_19h wrote:
| Anecdotally I can tell you that once Internet censorship in
| Russia (coming both from the state itself, and from foreign
| websites blocking access) ramped up enough, suddenly many
| very non-technical people have figured out how to use VPNs.
|
| And with something as popular as porn? Why, that just might
| end up being one of the largest VPN awareness campaigns. ~
| rchaud wrote:
| Good point. The new generation that came online this past
| decade never had to deal with popups, Limewire viruses and
| other things that forced us to learn to some basic level
| how a computer works and how it can be compromised.
|
| It reminds me of this 2021 Verge article quoting a college
| engineering professor who had to revamp teaching material
| as many of their students did not understand folder
| structures and computer file systems. Why would they? For
| them, everything is on Youtube, Netflix and Spotify.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-
| direc...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yep, when I was a teenager, computers were tools that
| provided access to things previously inaccessible. They
| were tools that empowered users. Enter a command, the
| computer performed the command and returned the results.
| Access to anything simply involved knowing the magic
| spell, and I spent my entire teens learning every
| incantation I could. My dad, who was totally computer
| illiterate, would not have had a chance in hell at
| enforcing content blockers.
|
| My daughter today lives in a world where users no longer
| issue commands to computers. 99% of computer users limit
| themselves to typing into a search box and clicking links
| they are fed. I don't even need to set up content
| blockers, because the idea of telling her computer what
| to do is foreign to her. Despite my attempts to get her
| curious about how they work and about hacking, she
| doesn't even care enough about it to venture outside of
| the pre-screened bookmarked sites I set up for her. If
| it's not reachable via her toolbar's Roblox and YouTube
| buttons, she doesn't even have a remote chance of finding
| it, and I know because I've seen the access logs.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _generated speculation that it could criminalize the use of
| VPNs_
|
| I don't like the RESTRICT Act but you're overstating your case.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It always been illegal to use VPNs to skirt laws. Downloading
| movies doesn't become legal when you use a VPN, lol.
| Sargos wrote:
| Downloading a movie is illegal, using a VPN to do it is not.
| If using a VPN was illegal then you would have two charges
| and extra time in prison. That's a giant difference.
| smegsicle wrote:
| > If using a VPN was illegal then you would have two
| charges
|
| don't think that's what RESTRICT act does tho
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Good luck with that ;) how are all those senators and
| congressmen going to watch porn with a law like that on the
| books?
| ZiiS wrote:
| Probably with no VPN and in public https://www.theguardian.co
| m/politics/2022/apr/30/disgraced-t...
| kibwen wrote:
| Since when have senators and congressmen been subject to the
| laws they pass?
| eviks wrote:
| The same way they do all the other illegal stuff
| shireboy wrote:
| Same way they do insider trading, pay-to-play, and cocaine
| orgies with laws against those on the books. The laws are for
| thee, not them, pleb.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Why would they watch porn when they can afford prostitutes?
| ajross wrote:
| No, it doesn't. RESTRICT empowers the federal government to
| enforce website bans, and provides for enforcement against
| efforts to evade those bans. This is a[1] Utah state law, and a
| voluntary ban set up by Pornhub itself to comply. Just not
| relevant.
|
| Mind you, RESTRICT is a bad bill, and those provisions are
| vague, and the EFF is right to be screaming about it. But it
| doesn't do what you think it does.
|
| [1] Hilariously and depressingly unconstitutional. Good grief.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Hilariously and depressingly unconstitutional. Good grief.
|
| How is it unconstitutional? I don't know the ins and outs.
| rbanffy wrote:
| IANAL, but it looks like a law that's designed to suppress
| specific forms of art and artistical manifestations, which
| could be argued are free speech.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Pornography is already restricted for minors. All this
| law does it make that restriction apply to internet sites
| as well.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Well, that's not _all_ the law does. It also strips
| anonymity and, therefore, privacy.
| George83728 wrote:
| My beard is gray but the government requires me to show a
| valid state ID when buying booze, cigs and porno mags at
| the gas station. If that's not a violation of the
| Constitution, why should carding people on porno websites
| be different?
| bobmaxup wrote:
| > why should carding people on porno websites be
| different
|
| Unless you live in a state where they scan your ID for
| such transactions, those in-person purchases can be
| effectively anonymous.
|
| Out of curiosity, what state do you live in where gas
| stations sell pornography?
|
| As an aside, in many cases, porn served by websites isn't
| meant to be bought. It is effectively advertising.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I never said there was a constitutional issue (I don't
| think that there is).
|
| The difference between showing ID to a clerk and this
| sort of thing is recordkeeping. A clerk is only checking
| the DOB on the ID, not keeping a record of your
| identity[1]. Online age checks keep records.
|
| If there were some way of doing an age check without
| having your identity attached to it or having to expose
| yourself to some commercial third party, I wouldn't have
| an issue. That's a tough nut, though.
|
| [1] I'm aware that certain businesses do keep a scan of
| your ID, but they're the exception and not the rule.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > constitutional issue
|
| As a foreigner, it's kind of strange that violent movies
| (and political propaganda disguised as violent movies)
| are protected speech and pornography is not.
| JohnFen wrote:
| As a US citizen, I've found that utterly bizarre and
| borderline insane for my entire life.
| George83728 wrote:
| In Europe, parents fear that violent media might effect
| their children, but worry less about sexual media.
|
| In America, parents worry that sexual media might effect
| their children, but worry less about violent media.
|
| I'm of the opinion that both are half right and both are
| half wrong. Both violent and sexual media effect the
| people who consume it. We are what we eat. There is no
| kind of media that doesn't effect consumers of that media
| in some way. Also, it bears mentioning that a lot of
| pornography is both sexual _and_ violent...
|
| (In case it isn't clear, those two trends I list above
| are gross generalizations. When I was a child in America,
| my mother would not allow me to play with tin soldiers or
| GI Joes, nerf guns, or watch cartoons more violent than
| Arthur. Not a typical American childhood, but
| nevertheless still an American childhood. Generalizations
| always have exceptions but I think they can be useful
| nevertheless.)
| [deleted]
| brookst wrote:
| Laws restricting speech must pass strict scrutiny, which
| means they are the lightest restrictions on speech that
| meet the government's interests.
|
| In Utah, it's clear that there would be less-restrictive
| ways to achieve the supposed goals of the law. For
| instance, jail parents whose minor children view
| pornography. That would not be a content-based restriction
| on speech.
|
| Since there is no way for a website to know the age of its
| visitors, the Utah law is a de facto ban on certain speech.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > For instance, jail parents whose minor children view
| pornography.
|
| Does this seem at all practical to you? To me, this seems
| akin to dropping ID requirements at liquor stores and
| bars, and instead enacting a law to jail the parents of
| minors who drink liquor.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| It's an absolutely horrible idea. It only makes sense if
| maybe there's serious neglect by the parents, knowingly
| allowing it to continue. But probably that level of
| neglect is already illegal somehow anyway.
|
| I mean, when I was a teenager I already knew how to
| program and my mother was completely tech illiterate. So
| how the hell was she supposed to control what a
| chronically horny teenage boy was getting up to on the
| internet?
| brookst wrote:
| I agree. But if Utah thinks that controlling horny
| teenage boys is such a vital state interest that it
| merits abrogating the first amendment, how can it be
| unreasonable to hold parents accountable?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Well, parents have to be pretty terrible at their job
| before taking the kids and putting them in a foster home
| is actually an improvement to their lives. From what I
| hear about CPS in the US, it should be the very last
| resort.
|
| We should also remember that teenagers are supposed to
| disobey their parents. It's not really the norm to have
| much control over your teenage children. That's just a
| natural stage of development from a dependent child to an
| independent adult who makes their own decisions.
| Sometimes teenagers just have to learn the hard way.
|
| I feel like porn is mostly harmful in combination with
| loneliness. I had a pretty bad addiction to it as a
| teenager but it kind of fixed itself when I started
| dating at 18 and realised the disconnect between porn and
| the real deal. If that never happened, I'd probably be a
| woman-hating incel by now.
| ajross wrote:
| > To me, this seems akin to dropping ID requirements at
| liquor stores and bars, and instead enacting a law to
| jail the parents of minors who drink liquor.
|
| Purchasing liquor isn't a first amendment right. The
| standards are indeed different.
| Marsymars wrote:
| As a non-American, whether something is legislated in
| their/your constitution, or at some other level, is for
| the most part, an implementation detail of the law that
| isn't too relevant to my concerns about the actual laws
| enforced.
| [deleted]
| brookst wrote:
| Well, we jail parents who abuse their children. And if
| viewing pornography is so dangerous to children that it
| justifies restricting speech for everyone, surely that is
| such a compelling interest that we should punish parents
| who allow it to happen.
|
| Which is all to say, no. None of this is workable because
| none of this is about protecting children from life-
| altering harm.
|
| This law is intended to create a liabikity trap to attack
| companies a religious state deems immoral.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > it justifies restricting speech for everyone
|
| I don't believe everyone considers pornography to be
| speech, let alone practices it as speech.
| brookst wrote:
| Well, the US Supreme Court considers pornography to be
| speech[1].
|
| And it turns out that restrictions on speech are
| unconstitutional independently of whether you want to
| exercise that particular speech. If a law is passed
| prohibiting discussion of mohair rugs, it infringes on my
| free speech even if I have no intention of discussing
| mohair rugs.
|
| 1. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=101895573
| 599950...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I know, I know. Well, I think it's silly that anything
| image or video-based is speech, but I was still being
| facetious.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Is the law bad for private and secure online porn? Probably.
|
| Maybe these things just aren't compatible.
|
| Choose local organic porn.
| mattpallissard wrote:
| HN: "Social media, tech, and media companies are evil. regulators
| should do something about this!"
|
| Also HN: "How dare Utah try and regulate a pornographic media
| company"
| wakannai wrote:
| Multiple issues with this.
|
| It starts off with arbitrary definitions of what pornography is
| (https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html): "nipple of
| the female breast"
|
| You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you ever
| take a look at it again before you are married. What's wrong with
| these people?
|
| Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in
| California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this
| subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here).
|
| Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on.
|
| This trend reminds tangentially of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority.
|
| On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations like
| https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to citizens in
| states that'd rather have you wear a burka than show a nipple.
| tristor wrote:
| > What's wrong with these people?
|
| It's Utah. Utah, for all the ways that actually matter, is
| effectively a theocracy operated by an ultra-conservative
| religious minority. Utah is about as similar to the rest of the
| United States as the rest of the United States is similar to
| the Middle East.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Salt Lake City has a progressive government, for what it's
| worth.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _an ultra-conservative religious minority_
|
| AFAICT, within the state, Mormons are not a minority but a
| majority. Wikipedia says[1] 60.68% as of 2020.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Utah
| borski wrote:
| I think the OP meant that they were a minority nationwide
| and worldwide. It isn't surprising at all that they are a
| majority in UT; that is literally where they breed, heh.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| Hyperbole much? Comparing Utah to the Middle East is a bit
| disingenuous.
| computerfriend wrote:
| They didn't, they compared the United States to the Middle
| East (with the suggestion that they are very different).
| tristor wrote:
| Well, both regions are deserts occupied in majority by
| religious zealots of a single ethnic group that believe in
| polygamy and their economy is primarily driven by natural
| resource exports (oil for the Middle East; gold, other
| metals, and agricultural products for Utah). I don't think
| the comparison is that far off.
|
| Utah is 85% white and 60% Mormon, so...
|
| The only reason that Utah isn't whiter and more Mormon is
| due to all the immigrant workers, just like the Middle
| East...
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| The LDS church has prohibited polygamy for well over a
| century now: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/art
| icle/polygamy-la...
|
| LGBT rights in Utah is also middle of the road among U.S.
| states. The LDS church also supported the recent Respect
| for Marriage Act unlike many other conservative Christian
| organizations. Your other points about climate and
| economy are extremely generic and not really a strong
| argument for why Utah more similar to the Middle East
| than the rest of the US.
|
| >Utah is 85% white and 60% Mormon, so...
|
| Maine is ~95% white and ~60% Christian, so what's your
| point?
|
| >The only reason that Utah isn't whiter and more Mormon
| is due to all the immigrant workers
|
| Replace "Utah" with "United States" and "Mormon" with
| "Christian", then it remains a true statement for the
| entirety of your country's existence. The United States
| is far more culturally homogenous than most Americans
| like you think it is. Consider travelling outside North
| America for once before making such egregious comparisons
| again.
| tristor wrote:
| > Consider travelling outside North America for once
| before making such egregious comparisons again.
|
| I've extensively traveled the world, to more than 70
| countries, and have spent years of my life living abroad.
| The United States is far more diverse and heterogeneous
| than most other countries in the world, contrary to your
| statements. Some subsets of the US are regionally /very/
| homogeneous, however, which is part of my point.
|
| It would help to start thinking of the US for what it is,
| a federation of 50 states, not a single entity with a
| single mind. There is a high level of diversity within
| the US, but in each state, there tends to be a balance
| point towards some particular dominant culture, which can
| include religion, and in the case of Utah was explicitly
| created to include religion (Utah was founded to give the
| Mormons a home).
|
| > The LDS church has prohibited polygamy for well over a
| century now: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/art
| icle/polygamy-la...
|
| Officially. Unofficially, polygamy is still widely
| practiced in Utah as part of the official doctrine of
| FDLS, which is the breakaway Fundamental sect of the LDS
| Church. The FDLS has recently gained more prominence,
| which lead to Utah making a surprising reversal recently
| by effectively decriminalizing polygamy, something that
| was for a long time a felony in Utah in order to follow
| LDS Church doctrine that banned polygamy as part of the
| split from FDLS. FDLS exists almost entirely within the
| state of Utah however, and the words of the Book of
| Mormon on this topic are literally plainly in black and
| white.
|
| Technically speaking, the Quran heavily restricts
| polygamy in Al-Nisa', 4:3 and clarified in Al-Nisa',
| 4:129. In practice however, polygamy is widely practiced
| in the Middle East and is a core part of the way in which
| many people practice Islam and has had no significant
| actions taken against it. It's specifically a core tenet
| of the Wahabi sect of Islam, which is the dominant sect
| in the modern Middle East (although other sects generally
| reject polygamy).
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| [flagged]
| tristor wrote:
| > [X] Doubt
|
| My multiple full passports say otherwise.
|
| > Shame on all those money you wasted travelling then
| because you clearly didn't make good use of it.
|
| I'm happy with my experiences. I'm not sure what parts of
| the world you went to, but most of the world is /very/
| homogeneous. There are parts of the world that are more
| diverse than the US, on some variable, for instance
| pretty much anywhere in Africa is more ethnically and
| linguistically diverse than anywhere in the rest of the
| world. But in the mix of things, the US is not the most
| diverse country, but is very much near the top. Canada is
| more diverse than the US, as an example, but the US is
| more diverse than essentially any country in Europe, any
| country in South America except perhaps Brazil, and most
| countries in Asia. It somewhat depends on what you mean
| by "diversity"? But the US has a mix of ethnic groups,
| religious groups, and cultural groups, as well as
| languages. You only don't see it because of assimilation
| over generations, but each of the groups leaves their
| mark on those regions in the US.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| [flagged]
| George83728 wrote:
| You should try disagreeing without personal attacks.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| [flagged]
| nocoolnametom wrote:
| Also, the SLC branch of the LDS movement hasn't performed
| polygamist marriages (for the living) since 1904[1], but
| they never annulled existing marriages from before then,
| so it's still less than a century since the prohibition
| against living polygamous marriages has been fully in
| effect by not having any existing within the membership.
| It's also still 100% part of the doctrine when it comes
| to the next life, and D&C 132 has never been officially
| repudiated or removed from the open canon. The current
| President/Prophet is sealed to two women for time and all
| eternity. This is an option only available to the men of
| the church, no such thing as polyandry (even though
| Joseph Smith himself was married to married women).
|
| As for the Respect for Marriage Act, they were pretty
| open about supporting it because it carves out exceptions
| against employment discrimination for religions (and
| they're certainly not the only religion to support it
| because of this). They're still pretty dead-set against
| having to support an employee's paycheck when that
| employee does everything else required for the job but is
| LGBTQ+. But I'd agree that the situation is getting
| better. SLC has a thriving LGBTQ population and social
| scene.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-
| topi...
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Not at all.
| qzx_pierri wrote:
| [flagged]
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > is effectively a theocracy operated by an ultra-
| conservative religious minority.
|
| You should look up what the word theocracy means. Here. I'll
| do it for you: "a system of government in which priests rule
| in the name of God or a god."
|
| Utah's government is a constitutional Republic. People vote
| in leaders who make laws and administer the government on
| their behalf.
|
| > Utah is about as similar to the rest of the United States
| as the rest of the United States is similar to the Middle
| East.
|
| Your unequivocally false, deceitful, and extremely hyperbolic
| statements aren't helping anyone out.
| cogitoergofutuo wrote:
| Have you spent much time in Utah? Off the top of my head I
| can't think of an organization that could be considered an
| even distant second to the LDS church in terms of influence
| over policies brought to and enacted by the elected
| officials in that state.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's a constitutional republic that got taken over by a
| 51% attack that, thanks in part to FPTP elections,
| they've leveraged into a supermajority.
| tristor wrote:
| > It's a constitutional republic that got taken over by a
| 51% attack
|
| It's a state that was literally created to be a place for
| Mormons because they were a persecuted religious minority
| ran out of every other state and it was a huge desert
| wasteland nobody else wanted. It's only due to huge
| influxes of immigration, especially from the South, that
| Utah is... _checks notes_ only 85% white and 60% Mormon.
|
| So it's like less of a 51% attack and more, business as
| usual and intended. If anything, the non-Mormons are
| going to soon be able to do a 51% attack and take Utah
| back, since Mormons are only 2% of the US population, and
| Californians are mass migrating to Utah now that people
| realized you can build in the desert with modern
| technology.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Persecuted because Mormons refused to respect American
| laws.
|
| Yes if someone starts a cult that does illegal things
| they don't get to claim religious freedom or cry about
| persecution.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I'm always vary of these arguments. Doesn't mean you are
| wrong, but remember there is a country call Democratic
| People's Republic of Korea and it has elections every 4-5
| years. Last one was in 2019.
| pkulak wrote:
| Theocracies can be elected. I fail to see how your
| definition of a theocracy automatically disqualifies Utah
| from being an "effective theocracy".
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > Theocracies can be elected.
|
| No, they can't, at least not by a general citizenship
| against a general pool of candidates. The Vatican's
| citizens don't get to elect the pope, and among those few
| who do vote, they can't choose a Bhuddist to be Pope.
|
| > I fail to see how your definition of a theocracy
| automatically disqualifies Utah from being an "effective
| theocracy".
|
| Well,I think you have to try really, really hard, not to
| see that.
| tristor wrote:
| >> Theocracies can be elected.
|
| > No, they can't
|
| Why not? The vast majority of people in Utah are Mormon,
| and people in high positions within the LDS Church often
| go into state and local politics and elected, precisely
| because they will enact policies that align with the
| moral tenets of the Mormon religion...
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > people in high positions within the LDS Church often go
| into state and local politics and elect
|
| Yep. That's called a democracy, or a Republic, depending
| on which word you prefer. It's literally nothing like a
| Theocracy, in practice or in theory.
|
| You should probably study what an actual theocracy is:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/theocracy...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I would argue the U.K. and Israel count as theocracies,
| too. It's not a strictly defined term. But I agree that
| having a religious voting block a theocracy does not
| make.
| tristor wrote:
| I would argue that Israel is definitely a theocracy, and
| for similar reasons to why Utah is. It's a democratic
| state specifically created to house a persecuted
| religious minority that make up a majority of its polity
| and its leadership is ethnically and religiously aligned
| with that group and specifically elected and governs on
| the basis of their religious beliefs.
| tristor wrote:
| It's literally a theocracy /in practice/ because the
| religious minority is the majority in that region, in a
| state literally created for them, and they have run it
| since its foundation on the basis of the their religious
| beliefs, and continue to do so. You can't get more
| theocratic while being inside the US.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| It's literally not a theocracy /in practice/. You don't
| get to redefine words to mean whatever you feel like. A
| theocracy is not a state that has some laws that
| correspond to one religion's moral code. It has never
| meant that, nor will it ever mean that.
|
| Here are some major practical differences between a
| theocracy and a constitutional republic.
|
| 1. If citizens change their mind, within one election
| cycle they can replace every leader with atheists, or
| ones with different religions, and change the laws
| entirely. This is not possible in any theocracy, either
| in theory or in practice.
|
| 2. A constitution, both state and federal, limits what
| the state government can do, even when the leaders are
| all of one religion. Such limits do not exist in any
| theocracies, in theory or in practice, because, when you
| rule in the name of God, limits to your rule are sinful!
|
| 3. Utah has checks and balances via different branches of
| government. It has judicial procedures, for instance,
| where minorities can seek redresses. Our state and
| federal governments were explicitly designed to protect
| minorities from the tyranny of the majority. No such
| systems exist in any theocracies, in theory or in
| practice. For one, the majority doesn't rule in
| theocracies! When the majority rules, that makes it a
| _democracy_. I 'm sure you've heard of that system of
| government?
|
| 4. Often, leaders disagree in Utah even when belonging to
| the same faith. The church itself has zero authority to
| adjudicate these disagreements. In a theocracy, the
| church's say would be final say, and all leaders would
| ultimately defer to church authority. Actually, they
| would _be_ the ultimate church authority. In a theocracy,
| the ruling officials would be one and the same as the top
| church leadership.
|
| > You can't get more theocratic while being inside the
| US.
|
| You can't get past 0% theocratic in the US because
| theocracy is illegal in the U.S. You redefining the word
| to mean something else doesn't change this fact.
| tristor wrote:
| In your definition, theocracy is only a theocratic
| dictatorship, however there are other forms of theocracy,
| and I am pointing out one such case. I do not believe
| either Israel or Utah are literally theocratic, only
| because they have constitutions that allow the free
| practice of religion, but in /practice/ both are.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You are making up a new definition for a word, different
| from how it's commonly used.
| tristor wrote:
| I'm pointing out that the world operates pragmatically
| and things in practice matter, not only rigid dictionary
| definitions of terms. There is a difference between
| something meeting a literal definition and meeting that
| definition in practice. Does litigating the semantics
| matter for those who are affected by government policies
| created for religious reasons? No? Okay, well, then my
| point stands.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > because the religious minority is the majority in that
| region
|
| Well that's quite the oxymoron.
|
| If they're the majority in that region, any
| democratically elected government should reflect their
| interests. Barring infractions of Constitutional limits
| protecting individuals, like the Bill of Rights, of
| course.
| [deleted]
| Jach wrote:
| This reads like an over-the-top warning that's really meant
| to try and keep more people (especially Californians) from
| moving in.
| [deleted]
| tempsy wrote:
| Ehh it's definitely not just the ultra religious
| conservatives who are raising issues with pornography.
|
| I see a lot more "health bro influencer"/Andrew Tate types
| warn against watching porn because they think it makes people
| weak minded, which I would agree with when it turns into an
| addiction and actually impacts your ability to form real life
| relationships.
| George83728 wrote:
| Andrew Tate is a pornographer.
| tempsy wrote:
| Very likely he's a hypocrite but that doesn't mean
| pornography can't have unintended side effects
| George83728 wrote:
| As far as I know he doesn't advocate against pornography.
| He advocates FOR being a pornographer and a human
| trafficker. He tells teenage boys to treat women like
| livestock.
| lesona wrote:
| You might see a lot of that personally, but the Utah
| legislature has a dearth of "health bro influencer" types,
| especially in its Senate.
|
| The chief sponsor of the bill went to BYU.[1] The co-
| sponsor of the bill went to BYU [2]
|
| [1] https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/
|
| [2] https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/
|
| Edit: spacing
| tristor wrote:
| Roughly 1/3rd of the House and Senate of Utah are BYU
| grads [1], and BYU is not the only religious Mormon
| university in Utah, just the largest.
|
| Utah was literally founded as a state to be a place for
| Mormons[2], because they were a persecuted religious
| minority in other states. I grew up in Missouri, and part
| of Missouri state history is that of the 1838 Mormon
| War[3]. At one point the Governor of Missouri signed an
| order that paid out for the scalps of Mormons[4]. The
| aftermath was a mass migration of Mormons from Missouri
| to what became Utah, literally founded as a place for
| Mormons, to this day Mormons consider Independence,
| Missouri as a holy site, but Utah is the headquarters of
| the LDS Church and the predominant residence of Mormons
| in the US.
|
| It is for all intents and purposes a theocratic state
| within the US.
|
| [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014
| /07/23/b...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah#Settle
| ment_by_...
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War
|
| [4]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Extermination_Order
| tempsy wrote:
| I didn't suggest if it is happening in Utah it isn't for
| religious reasons, but I don't think criticism of porn is
| strictly a religious issue.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There's evidence that the perception of "porn addiction"
| is mostly a religious thing, probably because it is a way
| of resolving conflict between the values of a religious
| identity group with which the "addict" identifies for
| cultural/social reasons and the "addict's" preference for
| porn by externalizing/pathologizing the preference.
| santoshalper wrote:
| [flagged]
| tempsy wrote:
| [flagged]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >What's wrong with these people?
|
| someone told me once "Think of the US less like a secular
| Western European country and more like a very rich Iran" and
| that really does help to make sense of a lot of these decisions
| bitcharmer wrote:
| My friend likes to refer to the US as a "third world country
| with a Gucci belt" and sadly I don't think this too far off.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| Sounds like you and your friend both spend a little too
| much time on the internet.
| dokem wrote:
| Yea go tell that to someone actually living in a third
| world country. How out of touch and spoiled can you be?
| shashwatak wrote:
| go to any impoverished town or neighborhood in any part
| of the USA and see for yourself: the running water is
| undrinkable, the food will slowly kill you, education is
| severely lacking, etc.
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn?
|
| Honestly we (Europeans) make the same mistake the Americans
| do in regards to us, we view the US as one homogeneous mass.
| The difference between states seems like it's often as great
| as between European nations. I'd be less concerned about the
| laws of the individual state, if companies did target the
| lowest common denominator for the entire US, just to make
| business easier.
|
| PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the
| state that's causing issues.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| > Isn't the US still the world largest producer of porn?
|
| Yeah, but only in a few areas in terms of studios, not
| individual creators. iirc studios/companies are mostly in
| California (LA mostly), Florida (Miami), and NYC.
|
| > PornHub is in my mind doing the right thing, blocking the
| state that's causing issues.
|
| Curious to know if this is strategic, in the sense that
| they're hoping their blocking of the state will piss off
| enough people to reverse the policy.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes you have it correct.
|
| When introducing myself to Europeans now I've started
| saying the state I'm from, such as "I'm from the state of
| Idaho in the US". Utah is a different state/place than
| Idaho (see liquor laws, state lottery) and both are _very_
| different than California or New York. They 're almost like
| different countries in some ways, especially over the last
| 10 or so years. Not too long ago you could pretty much live
| anywhere and the main difference would be where you buy
| your booze and your tax rates, but that's increasingly
| changing.
|
| On the rather extreme end, there are some serious movements
| for secession from the US. Funny enough they don't usually
| go very far because (shockingly /s) the red states drop
| their enthusiasm when a red president gets elected, and the
| blue states drop theirs when a blue get elected. But if we
| had a steady president for 3 or more terms, I would bet you
| it gets serious again.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| If every half-serious scheme for dividing the US didn't
| end up stranding some parts or splitting control of the
| Mississippi, I bet we'd have amicably split in two
| several decades ago, if not back in the 19th century.
| cpursley wrote:
| When's the last time the US publicly executed a homosexual
| person or adulterer, with or without trial?
| [deleted]
| bragr wrote:
| If you include lynchings (and I am), very recently:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_L
| G...
| haldujai wrote:
| Mob violence and hate crimes =/= state sanctioned
| violence.
|
| Readers should note that all of the cited examples here
| are considered criminal and illegal in the United States.
| bragr wrote:
| They literally asked "with or without trial"
| haldujai wrote:
| i.e. state sanctioned or publicly accepted execution
| without trial.
|
| No law on earth can physically prevent someone from
| acquiring a weapon and killing members of the LGBT
| community, the difference is whether this is tolerated
| and/or endorsed by the state and public, which it is not.
|
| You provided a list of heinous crimes that in no way
| reflects the views of the United States government or the
| general public.
|
| To make it even clearer, recent LGBT violence is not even
| remotely relatable to the widespread lynchings of Black
| Americans (which you are evoking with this word) that was
| 'illegal' yet systemically tolerated in the early-mid
| 1900s.
|
| Literally none of these LGBT crimes were associated with
| a mob proclaiming justice as was the case with historical
| lynchings.
| I-M-S wrote:
| With trial seems to be 1785 [1]. Without trial here's a
| list of killings in the last year: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...
|
| [1] https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refe
| rer=h...
| newfriend wrote:
| I'm sure you understand the difference between an
| individual committing a crime and a state-sanctioned
| execution. So what's the purpose of this comment, other
| than to mislead?
|
| Here are some highlights from your misleading list:
|
| > April 26, 2022 - An unidentified individual threw a
| rock through the front door of the Pride Center VT
| office. As of April, 2022 the incident remains unsolved
| and is being investigated as a hate crime
|
| Only two items in the list are even killings, including
| this one:
|
| > June 23, 2022 - Naasire Johnson was killed by his gay
| lover, Kylen Pratt.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Not execute. But there were laws against "sodomy" - ie
| consensual non heterosexual sex between adults in some
| southern states as late as the 80s and people went to jail.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > there were
|
| There still are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law
| s_in_the_United_Stat...
|
| > As of March 2023, 14 states either have not yet
| formally repealed their laws against sexual activity
| among consenting adults or have not revised them to
| accurately reflect their true scope as a result of
| Lawrence v. Texas.
|
| While Lawrence v Texas does limit these laws, there's a
| concerted effort to repeal it, and if that happens, these
| laws will go back into effect.
| haldujai wrote:
| More correct and less inflammatory version: "Think of the US
| less like a single (European) country and more like a
| collection of countries (states) representing various
| different cultures, some of which have widely divergent or
| more conservative values."
| abakker wrote:
| ummm. Don't think of the US this way? Think of it as a
| complex representative government that is federated and
| representing a highly diverse population, unlike Iran, which
| is not exactly pro-immigration.
|
| Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes. Utah
| is very different from Colorado or California or Connecticut.
| So, no, nothing like rich Iran.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Our government is at least partly reactive to our votes
|
| So is Iran's. Keep in mind the country is a theocratic
| _Republic_ that turned out this way because of a popular
| religious revolt against a secular absolutist monarch. That
| bottom up, democratic, religious zealotry is something you
| also have in the US but virtually nowhere in the developed
| world.
| abakker wrote:
| Don't know what to tell you, man. The US is drastically
| more diverse than Iran, and as a result is not nearly as
| hegemonic. Also, the US is a lot more moderate in its
| views and policies than Iran. The US political party
| rhetoric is quite different than a lot of our policies
| actually are. Sure, much of the political right in the US
| leans puritanical, but, that leaning is a still more lip
| service to a small, vocal base than broadly
| representative of our population.
| haldujai wrote:
| So you're saying there is no religious zealotry in
| Europe?
|
| What about the Christian Democratic Union of Germany
| which officially believes in Catholic Democracy and
| didn't recognize same-sex marriage until 2017?
| throwaw12 wrote:
| [flagged]
| sb8244 wrote:
| Addiction to anything is harmful. I don't make the leap that
| everything should be banned.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Way to regurgitate a tired argument. Kids are addicted to porn
| before they're old enough to drive these days and it's messes
| them up for life (see: the incel movement.) Something has to be
| done about corporations that profit off of showing literal
| children hardcore porn.
|
| "Talking to your kids" doesn't work when multinational
| corporations are incentivized to addict them for ad revenue.
| softfalcon wrote:
| Honestly, I think you both have a valid concern. However,
| these two views are not mutually exclusive.
|
| I think you can have both the overly aggressive censoring of
| nudity and also at the same time have corporations
| aggressively pushing porn onto anyone and everyone for
| profit.
|
| In my opinion, you could pretty clearly enact policy to
| resolve both of these issues without making it a one or the
| other argument or saying "something has to be done".
|
| Why does it have to only be one "something"? Could it not be
| two different "somethings" that target each issue
| specifically?
| scarface74 wrote:
| If only most internet connected devices came with parental
| controls...
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Please take your nofap zealotry elsewhere.
| throwaway987q wrote:
| "Incel movement" For the love of god. It is like calling poor
| people "powerty movement". Lost your arm? How dare you to
| belong to "one arm movement"? Don't you know there was was
| one arm rober with vad political views?
|
| No one chooses their life circumstances. Too poor ("just
| learn to code bruh!" (did)) and not good looking enough
| ("just work out bruh!" (tried did not grow my missing body
| part back)) to attract woman for one night stand in country
| with banned sex work? Well you must belong to some radical
| political party or be poisoned by porn!
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Blocking access to pornographic websites is the
| responsibility of parents or other responsible adults absent
| a federal ID verification system that would enable websites
| to reliably block kids (similar to S. Korea).
|
| You can justify almost any amount of censorship based on
| "thinking about the kids". But our society is built for more
| than just the first 20% of human life. The proliferation of
| this argument that everything from the internet to IRL
| bookstores need to be censored to protect children starts
| from a good place, but it jumped the shark a long time ago.
| tedivm wrote:
| What evidence do you have that the incel movement is driven
| by pornography? I always attributed it to the recruitment
| efforts of the alt-right and other misogynistic groups.
| softfalcon wrote:
| In my experience, you are correct. The incel movement (and
| others like it) is a targeted attempt to enflame naive and
| susceptible target(s) to a polarized view of the world.
|
| This is beneficial to the manipulators for various reasons,
| be they financial or political.
| bradlys wrote:
| Guys, the incel "movement" is just dudes not getting laid
| and whining about it.
|
| It's as old as time. They just happen to be on the Internet
| now and we've atomized society to the point where they're
| super common.
|
| Most everyone is an incel until they're not. After all -
| there's a point where you want sex and aren't getting it.
| Thus, an incel.
| George83728 wrote:
| I think you're underselling the problem a bit. Before the
| internet, dudes who whine about not getting laid were
| generally not able to organize effectively into social
| echo chambers, at least to the same extent as today. In
| 'meatspace', people are exposed to other people who have
| a wide array of experiences, including older more
| experienced men who tell the young incels to quit
| bitching and go talk to women.
|
| Online, in incel echo chambers, such voices of reason and
| wisdom are expelled. The incels then spiral into
| unchallenged worldviews that alienate them from the
| general public, isolating them from women and everybody
| else even more than they were before.
| bradlys wrote:
| Idk man - we've got all kinds of crazy ass ideas from
| back in the past. The idea of echo chambers seems to be
| way more easy to come by when you're living in a small
| town in the middle of nowhere and that's all the info
| you've got to go on. The internet is big and pushes all
| kinds of crazy shit your way.
|
| Nowadays, you're constantly pushed all kinds of random
| shit. The usual incel rhetoric that I see is - there's
| not many women to talk to. Which is mostly attributed to
| the decline of social spaces due to again - whole
| atomized society stuff and late stage capitalism, yadda
| yadda. (If you haven't heard about it yet - just read
| some robert putnam)
| drdaeman wrote:
| This doesn't sound right. While pornography certainly has
| impacts on immature minds (kids or young adults), I suspect
| it's rather in a completely opposite area than you've pointed
| out - like teenage pregnancies or kids engaging in various
| inappropriate sexual behaviors.
|
| I'm no expert, but I'd say incels' social ineptitude seem to
| come from personality traits and [mis]expectations that
| aren't that frequently portrayed in pornography. I'd say it's
| various media with unrealistic portrayal of romantic
| relationships that should be attributed (and that's typically
| not porn). And, obviously, strong meme-affirming effects of
| echo chambers, the bane of our times, but that's a whole
| different topic.
|
| I don't believe your last statement either. Where - except
| for anti-porn propaganda statements - have you seen any large
| adult industry corporation intentionally targeting children?
| The article in question clearly indicates that virtually
| everyone in that whole industry want kids to stay away from
| their businesses, because they only cause trouble. If someone
| invents a way to keep kids off the porn sites without having
| any negative impact on adult audience, I'm sure they're gonna
| celebrate that person as a savior of the industry. Those
| companies surely have put a blind eye to the problem, but I
| find the claim of adult industry actually targeting children
| to be outrageous.
|
| What makes me thing so is that I highly doubt the incentive.
| On the contrary, there's at least one very cynical reason to
| still say there isn't such incentive: kids aren't paying.
| Parents may tolerate them spending money on some in-game
| cosmetics, but surely they won't approve if they spot a porn
| purchase on a statement. Porn companies have enough problems
| making profits from adults, so them considering kids as a
| target audience sounds insane not just from a moral
| standpoint but from a business perspective as well.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| One of my favourite concepts in "late night" style comedy is
| when they test the censors by gradually incrementing something
| boring into something "unacceptable," whether it be language,
| the context of a sketch, or something graphic. And then once
| they've got the line they play with that line (eg. words/names
| that sound like "fuck", or Cecily Strong having sex with Bill
| Hader under a small throw).
|
| One of the best ways to demonstrate how ridiculous and un-
| thinking this position is would be to do just that. If they
| "know it when they see it", just say "when!" as we
| systematically wax, outfit, camera angle, and contextualize
| this stereotypical, upper-endowed male football fan into a
| gorgeous female, who then slowly gets topless.
| [deleted]
| padobson wrote:
| Is there a mechanism for empowering a polity to protect minors
| from certain things the polity deems they're not ready for that
| doesn't rely on arbitrary rules?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The concept of "minors" involves arbitrary rules, so, no.
|
| That isn't, however, an argument against restraint in such
| arbitrariness, but the opposite.
| sophacles wrote:
| How about: If you don't want your kids to see it, that's on
| you. Either accept that you are a shitty parent who can't
| raise children to your satisfaction, or get better at
| parenting. Don't force consequences on me just because you
| are incompetent.
| jdswain wrote:
| As a parent myself, I'd like to say that it's not that
| easy. There are measures you can take, but it doesn't
| always work.
|
| The web is maybe easy to control, but what about all the
| other means of communication kids have now, like in-game
| social tools? In the end that comes down to do you ban
| everything that could cause an issue, and then you are
| isolating your child from their friends.
|
| Even if that issue is solved, I've heard stories of kids
| 'forcing' other kids to watch porn on phones at school. How
| do you prevent that one? Most often the other parents are
| unaware, don't care, or even provide the porn.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| What do you think of helicopter parenting? What about the
| "free range" movement? What's the proper balance of freedom
| and privacy for kids?
| sophacles wrote:
| I was a free range kid (we just called it "being a kid"
| though). I feel bad for the kids of helicopter parents -
| the parent is hiding them from the world and blocking
| them from learning about the world as it exists and from
| discovering how they can/will interact with it. Then one
| day they cross a threshold of "number of days alive" and
| are expected to know how to live in the world they
| haven't ever been exposed to. Sounds like a derange
| science experiment carried out by insane control freaks
| more than parenting.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I agree. But if you aren't going to be a helicopter
| parent there needs to be _some_ safety valves for when
| kids go _too_ far off the rails.
|
| Calling a parent shitty because their kid does something
| they would prefer they didn't means we've all had shitty
| parents. Kids are individuals that gain preferences the
| minute they gain any sort of mobility and trying to reign
| everything in will backfire.
|
| I don't have strong opinions on this particular topic. I
| don't think porn is quite so damaging as others to the
| point where society needs to protect them. But the
| rational response to the views you expressed seems to
| contradict your actual views on the subject of how
| parents should raise their kids.
| sophacles wrote:
| > Calling a parent shitty because their kid does
| something they would prefer they didn't means we've all
| had shitty parents.
|
| Kids are going to do things their parents don't like.
| It's literally part of the kid learning about the world
| and themselves. It's shitty parenting to not know how to
| deal with this rather than trying to pass laws so that
| they can pretend the kid is just a miniature clone of
| their worldview.
| defen wrote:
| Are you a parent?
| throwaw12 wrote:
| How about: dissolving all labor unions, schools and
| governments?
|
| You do parenting and education yourself, protect yourself
| and your kids from any kind of harm outside. If you can't
| do it, just admit you are incompetent and don't force
| consequences of paying taxes on me
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Sounds good to me, honestly. Or rather better than a
| system where moral busybodies seem to think they can get
| me to attach my name to porn consumption.
| biftek wrote:
| what point are you actually trying to make?
|
| just because schools and the "government" exist doesn't
| free you from educating or taking care of your kid
| outside of those contexts. learn to be a parent
| Brendinooo wrote:
| We don't apply this principle to something like peanut
| allergies. "If your kid touches a peanut, that's on you as
| a parent"? No, people recognized that peanuts are harmful
| enough to a certain segment of the population that it's
| worth making changes, even changes that might inconvenience
| others.
|
| Besides, I'm not sure why you think that parents are able
| to be 100% in control of things that their children
| see/eat/etc. Should we legalize nudity on billboards, and
| would your suggestion then be to "simply drive on different
| roads"?
| pjlegato wrote:
| Writing "produced on equipment that also processes
| peanuts" on a food label is hardly inconveniencing
| others.
|
| It's still very much on the parents to prevent harm to
| their peanut-allergic children.
|
| As an aside, the sharp rise in nut allergies is itself an
| unintended consequence of another well-meaning attempt at
| social engineering: about 30 years ago, manufacturers
| began printing "CHOKING HAZARD: DO NOT FEED NUTS TO
| CHILDREN UNDER TWO YEARS OLD" on nut labels. Many parents
| complied, and that lack of any early exposure to nut
| proteins resulted in a massive increase in life-
| threatening nut allergies among children.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Do you have kids in school? Our kids aren't allowed to
| pack peanuts in their lunches because parents can't put
| an allergic kid in a cafeteria otherwise.
| evandale wrote:
| The consequence of exposing a kid with a peanut allergy
| to a peanut can be death. Watching hardcore porn won't
| kill a kid.
| m000 wrote:
| Also, when you know something contains peanuts, you just
| stick a label "CONTAINS PEANUTS" on the packaging. You
| don't get the grocery store to ask everyone for a peanut
| allergy certificate before selling them a jar of PB, and
| also keep a log of who bought PB from them.
|
| And we already have something similar for porn sites, in
| the form of the "Are you over 18?" landing page banners.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| That's not the only thing people do to help allergic
| kids. I mentioned this in an adjacent thread.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| It will harm a kid, and asking a website to figure out
| how to verify an age is far less burdensome than taking
| PB&Js out of kid lunches.
| sophacles wrote:
| What harm? Show your work instead of making wild
| assertions based on the notion that a sky-wizard might be
| mad that someone knows how their creator wanted them to
| replicate.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| "Sky wizard" is a bright red flag for a bad-faith
| argument, so I'm not going to do a bunch of research for
| you. Search around for voices of people who have
| struggled with porn addiction. If you think it's a purely
| religious thing, you're mistaken.
| vidarh wrote:
| Having followed this space for ~30+ years, I've yet to
| see any research that shows more than marginal and
| subjective effects at any kind of scale. Including in
| meta-studies. Sure, some people can struggle with
| addiction to porn, just as they can to chocolate and
| almost anything else. We don't respond with age
| verification to the vast majority of those other things.
|
| Since I haven't brought up "sky wizard", perhaps if you
| have any actual evidence of harm you might show me?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| evandale wrote:
| I could see ongoing watching harming a kid, but if they
| stumble upon porn one time by accident and see it? I
| don't see how that could harm them.
|
| A kid with a peanut allergy who came into contact with
| peanuts, even accidentally one time, could be fatal.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >It will harm a kid
|
| *Citation needed
| Brendinooo wrote:
| This sounds like a smart response until you think about
| the possibility of an academic study researching exposure
| of minors to hardcore porn. Think that would pass ethical
| muster?
|
| The fundamental questions are
|
| 1. Does porn usage line up with other patterns of
| addiction?
|
| 2. Are similarly addicting things withheld from children
| because their brains are less equipped to handle it?
|
| If yes to both, then it's a no-brainer.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >This sounds like a smart response until you think about
| the possibility of an academic study researching exposure
| of minors to hardcore porn. Think that would pass ethical
| muster?
|
| Well, yeah, it would...
|
| >1. Does porn usage line up with other patterns of
| addiction?
|
| I'm not sure what this question is asking. Porn usage may
| or may not 'line up' with patterns of addiction. That
| doesn't mean that porn always or even the majority of the
| time is. Can you rephrase this question into something
| more coherent?
|
| >2. Are similarly addicting things withheld from children
| because their brains are less equipped to handle it?
|
| LOL absolutely not. Children, especially American
| children, are given huge amounts of sugar, which is
| actually physically addictive. Many are given huge
| amounts of caffeine which is again, physically addictive.
|
| Millions of children around the country have tons of
| access to video games and TV, which can be addictive.
|
| >If yes to both, then it's a no-brainer.
|
| Well, you're first question doesn't make any sense, and
| your second question is a resounding no.
|
| The best way to keep your child from becoming addicted to
| anything is to act like a parent.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes and forcing people to show ID has really stopped
| underaged drinking and making drugs illegal have stopped
| people from smoking weed.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| "These are very effective but not _perfectly_ effective "
| is the lamest possible "gotcha!" in these kinds of
| discussions.
| scarface74 wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/teens.html
|
| > In 2019, 37% of US high school students reported
| lifetime use of marijuana and 22% reported use in the
| past 30 days.1 Past-year vaping of marijuana also
| remained steady in 2020 following large increases in 2018
| and 2019. However, large percentages of middle and high
| school students reported past-year marijuana vaping--8%
| of eighth graders, 19% of 10th graders, and 22% of 12th
| graders.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I remember those surveys. I did _so_ much meth.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You really don't think a lot of teenagers are smoking
| weed?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Yes and forcing people to show ID has really stopped
| underaged drinking and making drugs illegal have stopped
| people from smoking weed.
|
| > Past-year vaping of marijuana also remained steady in
| 2020 following large increases in 2018 and 2019.
|
| I've got a guess about why the number might be rising,
| and it rhymes with "egalization", in which case, yes,
| making drugs illegal reduced use of drugs. I guarantee
| fewer people in general, including fewer kids, smoked
| when it was illegal, and less was consumed overall. I'd
| further bet there's a lot less pot consumption by kids
| now, than there would be if dispensaries didn't verify
| age.
|
| But I also suspect it's just kinda hard to get clean data
| about teen drug use. I'd also guess the real figures are
| _extremely_ uneven (that "8% of eighth graders", if
| accurate, probably means 20% some places and 2% in
| others) and high use correlates to places where it's easy
| to get, which supports the notion that carding or
| outlawing should reduce use (since they make it harder to
| get).
|
| (Nb. I'm pro-legalization, I just think carding and
| outlawing _almost certainly_ strongly curb use, though of
| course they don 't stop it completely, and I think "this
| wasn't perfectly effective, so it's necessarily useless"
| isn't a strong point in most situations)
| Brendinooo wrote:
| There's plenty of room between "unrestricted" and
| "stopped".
|
| You're not arguing that "laws don't actually do
| anything", right?
| George83728 wrote:
| Laws against murder haven't stopped murder, so I guess
| those laws are useless.
|
| Gun control laws? Japan's ex-PM got blown away by a wacko
| with a homemade shotgun, so I guess gun control laws just
| don't work. Nevermind the _rate_ of gun violence in
| Japan.. it 's all or nothing.
| monetus wrote:
| This doesn't directly add to or take from your point,
| because obviously laws have a purpose -
|
| that assassin was motivated by an extreme religious
| affiliation to the lawmakers. There is irony here.
| George83728 wrote:
| I'm not seeing the irony, unless you believe that
| opposition to pornography being available to kids must
| necessarily have a religious motive. I oppose it, and I
| am an atheist.
| monetus wrote:
| It doesn't have to for anyone, but does in this instance
| as the lawmakers in question are motivated by their
| affiliation with a religion.
| YellOh wrote:
| What does society do to solve the peanut problem? Outside
| of schools, it seems _totally_ on the parent to stop the
| kid from eating peanuts. The parent does the grocery
| shopping, asks the right questions when taking the kid to
| a restaurant, and lets friends /other caregivers know not
| to give peanuts to the child.
|
| People do "make changes" for specific allergies & food
| restrictions by making the information available &
| creating some allergen-free zones (just like adult
| content is currently kept out of schools and family-
| friendly locations, and there are adult-content warnings
| most times) but peanut access is absolutely currently up
| to the parent, in general.
|
| I'm not even sure what the billboard thing is getting at.
| We shouldn't have nudity on billboards (except female
| breasts in nonsexual contexts), just like we shouldn't
| keep peanuts where we know anyone allergic has to be.
| Counter-hypothetical: it would be incredibly stupid to
| lock up peanut butter because kids _might_ take a $5 bill
| to the store and buy the clearly-labelled jar.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > What does society do to solve the peanut problem?
|
| We mandate labeling. We could _not_ do that and just say
| "parents, you must run a peanut-detection lab or have
| extremely restricted diets of only food you make
| yourself, to keep your kids safe", but we don't.
| YellOh wrote:
| I have no issue with labelling requirements for large
| commercial operations. To be honest I thought we already
| had that for adult content, given the specific TV/radio
| limits and the "confirm you're 18" popups so popular on
| the web.
|
| I realize I'm beating a dead analogy here, but I don't
| think we should impose those labelling restrictions on
| independent hobbyist websites, just like we don't require
| licensing or ingredient labelling for small bake sales.
|
| But even if we did, "label obviously-adult content" would
| be way more reasonable than "collect personal information
| to verify the real-life identity of site visitors, and
| log this sensitive data so it can be accessed (/hacked)
| later"
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I'm against forcing people to provide their ID in order to
| see pornography. Indeed, I am, if anything, supportive of
| adults being able to understand and fully experience their
| erotic lives, as long as no one is harmed, and to do so
| anonymously where possible.
|
| But your attitude is, in a historical context, weird. At
| basically no point in history has it been the case that the
| sole responsibility for the well being of children lay
| entirely with the parents. If you look, for instance, at
| the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see the Parenthood
| article section Parental Responsibilities), you will see,
| for instance, that throughout most of western history and
| for most people, there is an explicit or implicit
| understanding that it is, in fact, the parents who operate
| as stewards of children _on behalf of_ society and that the
| ultimate locus of responsibility for the security and well
| being of children is the society at large, not the parents.
| This is why, for instance, the state is typically
| understood to have the right to remove a child from the
| home of an abusive or neglectful parent. Given that
| understanding, there is a commensurate power in society to
| make rules which may protect children and in our particular
| historical moment these rules take the form of laws at
| multiple levels of government.
|
| It places a powerful (and disordered) burden on parents to
| make them _exclusively_ responsible for the safety and
| wellbeing of their children.
| l1tany11 wrote:
| Historically the level of privacy we have now is a recent
| phenomenon. What would nudity, sexuality and pornography
| be like if it weren't taboo at all? Maybe societies role
| in this matter is creating the problem in the first
| place. And the best thing for it to do is to abandon the
| puritanical principles that probably lead to the issue in
| the first place.
|
| If the community's role is to protect children, maybe the
| community shouldn't be creating the trap in the first
| place.
|
| Children are curious creatures. It's natural that they
| are curious about sex and the human body. In the past
| they could look around and see members of their family,
| tribe, etc nude and having sex. Now we've taken that away
| and made it taboo. You can either do nothing, try and
| lock it away harder, or go the other way.
|
| It's a very complex issue though so there's nothing close
| to easy. But this kind of legislation seems like a fight
| that has just as much to do with a particular religious
| viewpoint as it does anything to do with "protect the
| children".
| scarface74 wrote:
| I have no desire for "society" to make rules that govern
| my kids. Especially seeing that between gerrymandering,
| the electoral college and the fact that each state no
| matter what the size has two senators means that people
| who would love to impose their religious beliefs on
| others have an outsized influence on laws that are
| passed.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| You may not have any such desire but imagine if you died
| and your kid was adopted by an abusive person you _would_
| want the state to intervene. I'm as unsatisfied as you
| are about the current political situation in the United
| States, but the solution isn't to just demand the
| government withdraw. It is to actually engage _more_
| politically and with an understanding of what the true
| responsibilities of the state are.
|
| The state will _inevitably exercise power_. Only a
| vigilant citizenry can hope to modulate it.
| freedomben wrote:
| Meta comment: Your attempted use of markdown italics
| multiple times in your comment made it a little
| unreadable (I made this mistake for a long time myself).
| So pro-tip: On HN, _italics_ are the * * rather than
| markdown 's _ _
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Thanks! Muscle memory.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So exactly how is "engaging politically" going to help
| when the majority viewpoint is already ignored because
| they know they can just appealed to their gerrymandered
| system?
|
| Republicans can completely ignore California and
| Democrats can completely ignore the Bible Belt (except GA
| which is now Purple)
|
| As far as what the state can do. Again as a parent, when
| my children were minors, we chose trusted family members
| to be their guardian. If that wasn't an option, we would
| have chosen friends.
|
| No matter how you feel about the abortion issue for
| instance, even in conservative states, the majority of
| people don't want more restrictions as proven by recent
| ballot initiatives, yet the politicians are still passing
| laws.
|
| In my home state (Florida) the government is wasting all
| kinds of taxpayer money going after Disney and out of the
| list of things Florida and especially my city (Orlando)
| cares about is that Disney spoke out against a policy.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| There are ways to engage politically that do not depend
| on the legal structures in place.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So what is the purpose of "engaging politically" if it's
| not to change laws.
| Retric wrote:
| It's perfectly possible to limit the state to only
| specific areas, we don't let it set up arranged marriages
| for example.
|
| As to that specific example, I trust my own judgment for
| who my kids would be reared by more than I trust a
| bureaucrat with the same role.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It very much restricts people who want to marry more than
| one person from doing so and until a few years ago, the
| government restricted marriage to heterosexual couples.
| Retric wrote:
| The state doesn't recognize such unions, but it doesn't
| prohibit them either.
|
| So you can't have multiple marriage licenses, but you can
| legally hold a public polygamist civil ceremony followed
| by "cohabitation."
|
| Granted people want the legal befits of a recognized
| marriage rather than the state to treating it as two
| actors preforming a ceremony as part of a play. But such
| distinction are relevant when you say something is
| banned.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| There are federal laws against polygamy and laws against
| it in every state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality
| _of_polygamy_in_the_Un...
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| From the article you linked.
|
| "On December 13, 2013, a federal judge, spurred by the
| American Civil Liberties Union and other groups,[25]
| struck down the parts of Utah's bigamy law that
| criminalized cohabitation, while also acknowledging that
| the state may still enforce bans on having multiple
| marriage licenses.[26] The state of Utah appealed the
| decision, arguing that polygamist Kody Brown (whose
| relationships were documented in the show Sister Wives)
| lacked standing to bring his civil suit, since his county
| prosecutor, Jeff Buhman, had _not followed through on any
| plan to prosecute the Brown family._ The Tenth Circuit
| Court of Appeals (Denver) agreed with Utah and overturned
| the previous decision, thus effectively recriminalizing
| polygamy as a felony.[27]"
|
| Of note, the state of Utah won the appeal because they
| didn't bring action against the group rather than because
| the lower court's decision was incorrect. Thus polygamy
| can remain illegal as long as nobody is ever prosecuted
| for it.
|
| It also mentions: "Given that almost no polygamists
| bother to seek a second marriage license, the practice of
| forming a family with more than one spousal-styled
| relationship is very difficult to criminalize. In the
| majority of cases, the additional partner is considered a
| wife in the context of religious beliefs. Legally
| speaking, the practice is more akin to adultery."
| scarface74 wrote:
| https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/sister-
| wives-wi...
|
| > If even one of the marriages is a legal, civil
| marriage, then Kody and the wives are probably guilty of
| bigamy under Utah's definition. The Utah Code states that
| a "person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a
| husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband
| or wife, the person purports to marry another person or
| cohabits with another person." This is broad in three
| respects -- it criminalizes the behavior of both
| purported spouses, not just the one who is already
| married; it, as interpreted by the state's highest court,
| includes religious ceremonies undertaken without a civil
| license as falling under the heading of "purporting to
| marry"; and it criminalizes cohabitation (as well as
| actual marriage) with a second person while married to
| someone else.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Wouldn't the solution be to not marry anyone and solely
| cohabitate with your partners? Get power of attorney,
| etc. to close the gap on the marriage perks.
| Retric wrote:
| There's an actual court case you could look at. It was
| thrown out on appeal because the state didn't prosecute
| them.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You can't minimize the chilling effect of being targeted
| and prosecuted by the government even if it is thrown out
| on appeal. Were they jailed during the appeal process?
| Were they allowed to leave the country or even state with
| a pending court case?
| Retric wrote:
| No to all of that, it was a civil not a criminal case.
|
| The _family brought the lawsuit,_ which was thrown out
| because they didn't have standing. They lacked standing
| because the government hadn't prosecuted them.
| Retric wrote:
| It very much lines up with the historical context.
|
| In Hammurabi's Code fathers could literally sell their
| kids into slavery. This seems strange, shouldn't society
| protect kids? But it turns out that's a relatively recent
| idea, instead there were rules around what happens when
| both parents die but children were plentiful and many
| where injured or even killed by their parents without
| consequence.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Ah yes, who doesn't want to return to the good old days
| of the code of Hammurabi.
| plokiju wrote:
| Weren't you the one just making an appeal to history and
| tradition above?
| defen wrote:
| If someone makes an appeal to tradition/history, I don't
| think it's reasonable to conclude that they're advocating
| for things which happened 4,000 years ago in a society
| completely alien to our own.
| Retric wrote:
| That's fair, but if there argument is "At basically no
| point in history..." it is reasonable to mention that
| they are mistaken in that belief and the reverse was true
| for most of recorded history.
|
| Which doesn't mean I disagree with them, just that their
| argument isn't sound. Slavery was also depressingly
| common and I am glad it's become vastly less common
| today.
| George83728 wrote:
| This is a very stupid argument. It's as stupid as: _If
| you hate tradition so much, how would you like it if we
| dispensed with the tradition of murder being taboo?_
| dwallin wrote:
| I do believe it is quite clearly a rebuttal to the
| following overreaching statement:
|
| > At basically no point in history has it been the case
| that the sole responsibility for the well being of
| children lay entirely with the parents.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Does that apply to all the "bad" things that someone else
| could do to a child?
| honkycat wrote:
| Why do we need a policy? Why aren't parents doing basic
| things like setting up content filters?
| mattpallissard wrote:
| > Why aren't parents doing basic things like setting up
| content filters?
|
| Not a comment on the policy; I'm a parent and AFAICT none
| of my cohorts in town know how to do this.
| waboremo wrote:
| Yes education on content filters is absurdly low despite
| how crucial they are for general use. There are so many
| layers of filters that exist today (and almost every
| major player has their own family filter app/system), but
| outside of the ones that are forced before use, many have
| absolutely no idea they exist. It gets tucked away in a
| settings menu somewhere under your account menu
| basically. Or like on iOS where you have to also go into
| screen time to set filters, it can be confusing!
|
| This isn't to say the systems that exist are really good
| enough yet, many of them need to be more detailed. For
| example, most apps are an on or off toggle, rather than a
| "let my kid play minecraft but chat is disabled and they
| can only join designated family friendly realms". So what
| often ends up happening even for parents who _do_ know
| about the filters, is they wind up relaxing them to the
| point of being useless.
| Osiris wrote:
| My son runs a vpn to get around my dns enforced fillers.
| I've tried to block vpns but he still finds a way.
| luoc wrote:
| That's great and how many hacker careers have started!
| monetus wrote:
| My thoughts echo yours; it might be frustrating but they
| should maybe be a little proud.
| millzlane wrote:
| You don't block the VPN, you take away his admin access.
| freedomben wrote:
| Your overconfidence just got you hacked by your son
| because taking away the admin access did nothing. The kid
| just installed a scummy Chrome plugin that gives him a
| "free" VPN (I say "free" because it's surely logging
| everything he does) and it works directly from chrome. no
| admin needed. Source: my son did this to me
| someNameIG wrote:
| A VPN would get around age verification filters too, the
| kid would just set the VPN server to a jurisdiction that
| doesn't require age verification.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't understand - if I did this kind of thing as a kid
| I'd just lose progressively more and more privileges. My
| parents never put technical obstacles in my way - there
| were just clear consequences for braking the rules. If
| your son keeps braking the rules you've set....surely
| there comes a point where he loses his phone/PC or
| whatever? No?
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| tldr: if your kid keeps breaking the rules, ramping up
| enforcement is not going to change that for the same
| reasons that punitive punishment in the judicial system
| is not effective. Your kid has to understand _why_ the
| rules are if they 're ever going to function well within
| them, and that also requires a level of parental
| compassion and understanding that often isn't present.
|
| > If your son keeps braking the rules you've
| set....surely there comes a point where he loses his
| phone/PC or whatever?
|
| The efficacy of this depends wildly on how the rules are
| explained and enforced, I think. This is a topic that
| comes up often between my aunt and I. She has two kids
| about 10 and 13 years younger than I am, and often asks
| my father and I, the tech people of the family, how to
| enforce content filtering and screen time limits for both
| kids. I've effectively refused to help on the basis that
| it'll only offer her a false sense of security, given
| that I was able to circumvent every control I faced with
| relative ease at the same age as her son. I felt that
| anything she tried to do on the "blind enforcement" angle
| would just encourage conflict with her oldest, who like
| me was rather technically inclined and often frustrated
| by parental oversight.
|
| Note, I'm not a parent, just an adult with some
| frustrations over how this stuff was handled when I was a
| kid, so I'm sure there's blindspots and misconceptions
| here. Take all this with a grain of salt.
|
| My mom embodied the philosophy of "these are the rules,
| and you lose privileges if you don't follow them." This
| most often came up in conflicts over technology. She
| would set rules over what kinds of games I could play
| (non violent only), when I could use the computer (not
| after like 7pm), and broadly how much time in a week I
| could spend on it (maybe 5 hours before I'd start getting
| pressure to hop off), in addition to the standard no-
| admin-rights and interent-content-filtering.
|
| I'd often circumvent this stuff through a combination of
| linux boot disks and just messing with the BIOS clock.
|
| Mom never really explained why the rules were what they
| were. Some I could extrapolate: the content filtering
| seemed to largely stem from her Puritan view of sex. Thou
| Shall Not, and no further discussion. The time-spent I
| was less clear on, but I think it was broadly just that
| "screen bad" and there were more interesting things to do
| in the world, in her opinion. For my part, games and
| computers were my only social connection to others, as an
| only child who lived across town from all his school
| friends. This means whenever I "lost privileges" for my
| phone/computer/etc, I was now socially isolated as well,
| which just made me more upset.
|
| There certainly were times she took everything away, as a
| "loss of privileges" for breaking the rules, but then I
| just got more miserable because the root problems for me
| still weren't being addressed. Moreover, that meant she
| was constantly framed as an adversary: enforcing the
| rules as a single parent takes _significant_ effort,
| because there 's no outlet. I had nobody to vent to, she
| had no other adults for backup or to bounce ideas off of.
| Plus, I needed the thing for school often: writing papers
| for class, or looking up how to do my math problems.
| There came a point where, philosophically, it was
| difficult to physically take things away because I'd
| bought them with my own money or they were gifts from
| other family members.
|
| Compare this to my dad's strategy: He knew there were
| plenty of things in the world he didn't want me having my
| life ruined by, so he went for education over
| prohibition: "You're too young for porn, because it gives
| you unrealistic expectations of both sex and
| relationships. Also it forms addictive habits. You can
| ask me questions, and I'll keep an eye on your internet
| usage in case I see anything we need to have a
| conversation about, but you should stay away from that."
| Infinitely more effective to a developing-me: now I
| understood his concerns, the goals, and had a method of
| recourse if I disagreed.
|
| As an adult, I 100% understand that there's good damn
| reason to prevent kids from having unfettered access to
| the internet. Especially preteens and younger: holy crap,
| youtube is a brain-melting attention-hacking cesspool.
| Simultaneously, I think it's insanely unreasonable to
| "walled garden" everything off and call it a day. That's
| not how the world works, and if that's the chosen method
| of "safety" then you're just making it so your kids will
| never come to you with questions during their own
| exploring while also leaving them unprepared once they're
| outside of your bubble. I was always insanely frustrated
| that my mom didn't just talk to me, or when she did, that
| her beliefs and concerns were always more important than
| mine. Again, I get it: kids are not always rational, it
| is the job of the parent to watch out for forms of harm
| that kids aren't paying attention to, etc--but I still
| hold a lot of those frustrations as an adult, especially
| because I never felt like I got to voice them as a kid.
| So, I just went around them. Constantly.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| I support the education driven approach, but I still
| think there is room for content filtering. In the next
| few years, I hope turning on suite of content rules
| across platforms will mitigate explicit material from
| automatically being included in normal content feeds and
| prevent casual searches for porn. I have no expectations
| that blocking material from enterprising children will be
| effective and consider it a more of a parenting strategy
| failure anyway.
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly. I use content controls even though as a kid I
| easily worked around them. The reason is that it is
| _insanely easy_ for kid to _accidentally_ stumble upon
| explicit stuff. The content controls help a lot with
| that, whether kid is 5 or 15
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| Yeah, I think there's absolutely value in controlling the
| pressures and expectations that kids are under--e.g.,
| filtering sexually suggestive stuff out of social media
| feeds, etc. (Also for violence, too. I know seeing stuff
| like combat footage out of Ukraine is doing weird things
| to my psyche, I can't imagine what it'd be doing to a
| still-developing-brain.)
|
| I figure the best strategy (again, as a non-parent) is
| kind of defense-in-depth: implement some general
| screening to keep the ambient level of attention-
| bombardment somewhere sane, help your kids develop sane
| habits around their tech use and getting what they want
| out of it, and educate the kids on why those controls are
| in place for the stuff that leaks through.
|
| Again, my main concern is how much people crutch off of
| "just block everything," along with the knock-on effects
| that can lead to. E.g., there's a growing pile of people
| in the US who class any form of LGBT media as
| "pornography", which is patently ridiculous, but if
| that's the criteria used by your chosen filter mechanism
| or if that's the criteria people try to apply to
| _society_....
| mattpallissard wrote:
| > if your kid keeps breaking the rules, ramping up
| enforcement is not going to change that
|
| I can't speak for all children, but I have five of them
| and this works pretty damned well in most circumstances.
| George83728 wrote:
| Yeah, there's a reason every single society on Earth,
| across all cultures, will dish out some form of
| punishment for misbehavior, however they define it. Even
| in Sweden or other scandi countries where I am told
| murderers are rehabilitated instead of punished, if you
| drive at 300 km/hr through a residential neighborhood I'm
| certain they'll hit you with a massive fine at the very
| least.
|
| Why is punishing misbehavior such a universal practice
| across all human cultures? _Because it works_. It never
| works _perfectly_ but it _does work generally_.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Can confirm, it's very effective.
| pmichaud wrote:
| I feel like if you're involved in a red queen race of
| VPNs and filtering, your kid is probably old enough to
| see whatever they are trying to see?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Interesting dichotomy among the sibling comments. One is
| about removing privileges, the other is about
| (ostensibly) empowering a smart kid to continue learning
| how to hack and eventually possibly make a career out of
| it.
| [deleted]
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I posted this in another thread, but how are parents
| supposed to set up content filters for social media sites
| that allow pornography? Reddit's posts are ~40% marked
| nsfw, and they host hardcore porn of all types on the same
| domains as discussion forums for minecraft and roblox.
| Apparently some policy is needed to allow content filters
| to work in the first place, especially as everything is
| using TLS these days and it's being made increasingly
| difficult to install root certificates to do MITM filtering
| (not that it was ever easy).
|
| I think this is a poor solution; a more empowering one
| would be to develop a standard for content categorization
| and require commercial websites and commercially developed
| browsers (so all of them that are in common use) to
| implement content blocking via e.g. header exchange, with
| criminal penalties for negligently providing pornography
| without the correct headers (have some provision for
| vandalism when good-faith moderation is in place). Then
| parents actually _could_ just configure their OS or browser
| for what kinds of content should be allowed.
|
| A better first step than this bill could also be to require
| any site that hosts a significant percentage of
| pornographic content (which I'd place at much lower than
| the 33% of this bill) to put it on a separate subdomain
| from any child-oriented content (e.g. forums for a
| children's game) so that DNS based filtering can work.
| cmh89 wrote:
| > posted this in another thread, but how are parents
| supposed to set up content filters for social media sites
| that allow pornography? Reddit's posts are ~40% marked
| nsfw, and they host hardcore porn of all types on the
| same domains as discussion forums for minecraft and
| roblox.
|
| https://www.cisdem.com/resource/block-reddit.html
|
| It's called being a parent
| ndriscoll wrote:
| You're kind of missing the point here. Parts of reddit
| are fine. Kids should be able to participate in forums
| about children's interests. The problem is a site is
| comingling children's forums and porn in a way where
| filtering is unreasonably difficult.
|
| It's reasonable to demand that a company that's in the
| business of hosting forums dedicated to children's topics
| (e.g. /r/teenagers or /r/roblox) and also hosting forums
| dedicated to porn needs to do it in a way where the two
| can be effectively separated or understood by filtering
| software. The solution to Cartoon Network airing programs
| for children and adults isn't to block the channel
| entirely; they just need to correctly label their adult
| programming so filters will work. In reddit's case, they
| already mark threads and subreddits as nsfw so it'd be
| trivial for them to put that onto a separate domain. Even
| 4chan puts their hobby boards on a different domain from
| porn and /pol/, and they're not even trying to appeal to
| children, banning anyone that mentions they're under
| 18/in high school/etc.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >You're kind of missing the point here. Parts of reddit
| are fine. Kids should be able to participate in forums
| about children's interests. The problem is a site is
| comingling children's forums and porn in a way where
| filtering is unreasonably difficult.
|
| I'm not missing the point at all. Reddit is a product.
| Your job as parent is to evaluate whether or not a
| product is appropriate for your child.
|
| You know that Reddit doesn't have parental controls. If
| you can't trust your child to not go onto the NSFW
| subreddits, you should block Reddit so they can't access
| it. Sometimes you have to tell your child 'no' and they
| don't get the thing they want. The other thing you could
| do is write Reddit and advocate for parental controls.
|
| It's absurd and entitled to believe that I should have to
| jump through hoops because you want your child to have
| access to a website that it sounds like is inappropriate
| for them. I personally think Robolox is terrible for
| kids. Should Reddit install a parental consent form to
| make sure that parents who don't want their kids to
| consume Robolox content can't access it? Where does it
| end?
|
| >It's reasonable to demand that a company that's in the
| business of hosting forums dedicated to children's topics
| (e.g. /r/teenagers or /r/roblox) and also hosting forums
| dedicated to porn needs to do it in a way where the two
| can be effectively separated or understood by filtering
| software.
|
| It's not reasonable to expect a company to filter content
| based on your personal understanding of porn. If a
| product doesn't meet your needs in terms of parental
| controls, be a parent and say 'no'.
|
| >The solution to Cartoon Network airing programs for
| children and adults isn't to block the channel entirely;
| they just need to correctly label their adult programming
| so filters will work.
|
| Again, you should write Reddit and ask for these parental
| controls. I'm fine with that. It's when you pass laws
| making me jump through hoops that a problem exists.
|
| >n reddit's case, they already mark threads and
| subreddits as nsfw so it'd be trivial for them to put
| that onto a separate domain. Even 4chan puts their hobby
| boards on a different domain from porn and /pol/, and
| they're not even trying to appeal to children, banning
| anyone that mentions they're under 18/in high school/etc.
|
| And those are the companies choices. I'm not opposed to
| parental controls, but if parental controls don't exist,
| don't pass laws to force them to.
| firstlink wrote:
| Not exactly on-topic but: it appears this bill carefully
| defines "the Internet" as the global packet-switched network
| (!) but then fails to define "website", which is used (as
| "internet website") in the actual law. This isn't necessarily a
| drafting error because laws must always have undefined terms,
| but it is rather odd. I'm perennially concerned at the
| conflation of these two concepts, internet and www, because it
| makes it easier for malicious actors to seize personal domains
| and generally gatekeep the internet for use by the (commercial)
| web.
|
| Anyways, back to debating porn.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > "nipple of the female breast"
|
| IANAL, but what would happen if you took a picture of a male
| nipple and used that to censor the female nipple? Would it be
| okay?
| russdill wrote:
| I think it would fall under "depiction". Something doesn't
| have to be a photo to be considered pornographic by legal or
| even lay standards.
| erenyeager wrote:
| Nothing wrong with government wanting people to wear burkas and
| cover up some more, it's part of respectful and dignified
| society. Maybe don't insult and denigrate modesty and other
| cultures next time.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Mandatory reminder that the US covers more land area than the
| entire EU. And while the population is 185 million people
| smaller, think about how wildly different the various EU
| countries are culturally.
|
| While the US has something of a shared culture, the South has a
| wildly different culture than New York. It's OK for Germany and
| France to say that the politics of Hungary and Poland shouldn't
| represent them, and vice versa.
|
| Blanket statements about the US aren't much different than
| blanket statements about the EU. It greatly depends where you
| are. And in an alternate timeline, the US may have been more
| like the EU, especially back when US states had very large
| armies (er, "militias") of their own. And some still do though
| they are much smaller now (SDFs).
| renewiltord wrote:
| My experience living in North Carolina, Texas, New York, and
| California gives me the picture that this is an exaggeration.
| Imho, the difference is somewhat like that between a northern
| town near Newcastle and Covent Garden.
|
| Most nations have regional differences in the realm of the
| US. Yes, a town like Alba in Texas isn't like NYC culturally
| or physically, but many countries have this difference.
|
| I suspect that of the many that I have lived in or visited,
| the only ones with apparent uniformity are ones I haven't
| really seen deeply: Iceland and Norway perhaps.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Canada's similar bill just passed senate reading on the 18th
| and needs to go to the house. It just says "sexually explicit
| material" and I'm having trouble finding an exact definition
| because its changed a bunch and I can't find the current
| definition.
|
| https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/s-210
|
| UK
|
| https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388255
|
| I'm not sure where else these bills are being passed but it
| seems more or less in concert you will have to use a government
| approved age verification system to access porn, which may kill
| it off as I don't think people want to give the government
| information on what porn they watch.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| France and Germany too.
| int_19h wrote:
| It won't kill it, it just means that porn sites will be
| hosted outside of those jurisdictions, and people will use
| VPNs to access them if needed (which, ironically, might
| actually spread awareness of VPNs in general, making it
| harder to regulate other online content in the future).
| LegitShady wrote:
| I believe one of the largest companies, mindgeek, is
| luxembourghian for tax status but operates more or less out
| of canada.
| brightball wrote:
| There's such a strange dichotomy in these conversations.
|
| 1. Porn shouldn't be available to kids and it's on the vendors
| legally to ensure that.
|
| 2. Porn should be unrestricted, it's up to parents to do
| something about it.
|
| What I can't understand is if the people in camp 2 are so
| unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification
| such a big deal?
|
| If it's not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn't phase
| you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol. If it is
| then you know exactly why kids should be kept away from it.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >What I can't understand is if the people in camp 2 are so
| unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification
| such a big deal?
|
| When marijuana became legalized in my state, you had to
| verify your age and they wrote down your ID in a book. It
| quickly went away because its draconian as shit. I'm not
| ashamed to buy weed or alcohol, or look at porn, but I still
| don't want to create a written record every time I do it.
|
| I also generally don't agree with the moral panic that
| conservatives want to generate about porn. Most kids see porn
| and have since porn was produced. It's on the parent to, you
| know, be a parent.
|
| These laws have nothing to do with protecting children and
| everything to do with social control.
|
| We're talking about a state that imprisoned a women for being
| topless around her children. These people are dangerous and
| want to enforce their fringe world view on everyone they can.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >I still don't want to create a written record every time I
| do it.
|
| What I couldn't understand about this scenario (regardless
| of the product being purchased) is... how does it possibly
| get tracked? Like can't I just drive across town to the
| other grocery store and buy more cold meds there? How on
| earth is the state (???) collecting and reconciling paper
| records in the 21st century? The likely answer is that they
| aren't, but someone who wrote the law was certain there had
| to be an audit trail...
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > If it's not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn't
| phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol. If
| it is then you know exactly why kids should be kept away from
| it.
|
| This is very different. When I buy alcohol, the guy at the
| checkout looks at my ID picture, checks the DOB, then we move
| on with the transaction. Digitizing the process changes so
| much.
|
| Will porn websites be required to provide an audit trail to
| regulators to verify compliance? Will providers need to send
| your ID to a third party provider to verify authenticity?
| What security and privacy guarantees are in place? What is to
| stop another Ashley Madison style leak from outing gay
| Mormons in Utah?
|
| "We do it in analog, so it will be fine at scale in digital"
| is not an argument I would expect on HN.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 2. I don't want to live in a permission society where I have
| to submit to inspection to do anything.
|
| _If it's not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn't
| phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol._
|
| I don't like that either and some years ago I stopped
| providing my ID on request. Corporate vendors (eg
| supermarkets) still insist on asking my birthdate. I'm in my
| 50s.
|
| Paternalistic attitudes infantilize society and that's a lot
| more shameful than most porn could ever be. Absent specific
| reasons to believe abuse or exploitation is taking place,
| lawmakers need to stay out of other people's business.
| uncletammy wrote:
| > I don't like that either and some years ago I stopped
| providing my ID on request.
|
| How does this work with picking up prescription medication?
| gnicholas wrote:
| The only time I've been asked for an ID at a pharmacy was
| for non-prescription sudafed. I've picked up many
| prescriptions for myself and my family, and they have
| never asked for ID.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Same, I pick up prescriptions for myself, my kids, and my
| wife, all the time. I can't recall ever being ID'd, and
| I'm certainly I'm not _usually_ asked for ID. Maybe it
| varies state-by-state?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I was addressing the requirement for alcohol sales, for
| which prescriptions are not required. I am not too hot on
| pharmacists requiring ID for everything either, the
| prescription is its own documentation.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Funny enough in my small town - I walk into the pharmacy,
| they ask the name and birthdate of the person for whom
| I'm picking up the meds (generally my kids), I pay and
| leave. On the other hand, at least for a while if you
| wanted to buy Sudafed (OTC) at a grocery store, they
| would ask for ID and write you down on a paper list. ???
| Uehreka wrote:
| For controlled substances like ADHD medication they do
| ask for ID. I think for most people the only controlled
| substance medication they get with any frequency is
| Sudafed, so that tracks. (For the record, I'm pretty sure
| "controlled substance" and "Rx required" are separate
| categories)
| rav3ndust wrote:
| They do this because pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) is
| commonly used in illegal production of methamphetamine.
| This has been a common practice since the mid 2000s,
| iirc.
| rgavuliak wrote:
| Because when buying alcohol, you can for the most part
| (outside of online purchases, but even then the courier can
| check an ID upon delivery hypothetially) verify it fairly
| easily. With online porn, the scale and complications doing
| it put a much bigger burden on the providers.
|
| Additionally porn has a much bigger stigma than alcohol, so
| keeping record of what you watch, especially if you're into
| something more niche connected to your name can be used to
| discredit political opponents or even single out certain
| group due to abuse of power. A good example would be exposing
| a conservative politician that watches gay porn. Not that
| would necessarily be a bad thing, but there is no equivalent
| to this with alcohol - oh you drink tequilla, but you're
| whole ideology is based on drinking whiskey...
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > With online porn, the scale and complications doing it
| put a much bigger burden
|
| This could be very easily done at the ISP level for the
| whole connection. (I'm talking best effort not a perfect
| implementation)
|
| Why not just block all "Adult" content by default and allow
| the buyer to opt in (both temporarily via password, and
| permanently).
|
| Then it would be a decision each household could easily
| make about what they want.
|
| edit: I love the downvotes without rebuttal. Reminder that
| the downvote in this community is not "I disagree with you"
| freedomben wrote:
| Aside from the implications of turning an ISP into a
| decider of what you get to see rather than being a "dumb
| pipe," what about parents who want to view porn but don't
| want their kids to? Should they be forced to choose
| between 20 years of abstinence or potentially exposing
| their kids?
|
| The "household" is a pretty bad level at which to have to
| make these decisions, given that people of all age ranges
| share the same household. It seems to me that age
| verification makes a lot more sense than this, (and ftr I
| think Utah's bill is ridiculous overreach and would have
| massive privacy implications that are highly
| problematic).
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > what about parents who want to view porn but don't want
| their kids to
|
| That was specifically addressed in my post. Temporary
| disable.
|
| Remember that safe guards dont have to be perfect before
| being implemented. They just need to be better than the
| status quo. The status quo right now is 10 year old kids
| viewing porn and thinking that's what average intimate
| loving relationships look like.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yeah the temporary disable isn't my complaint. That's not
| the worst part. My criticism is the system in place
| _after_ the parent has made the choice. As a parent, do
| you choose your own freedom or to protect your children?
| Most will choose the latter and basically have to choose
| "abstinence" for themselves for many years. It's a pretty
| sucky choice to have to make given that such an
| artificial and unneccesary choice is being forced on them
| by the legal system and their ISP.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| My point was at the moment of choosing they could either
| open the entire connection to $CONTENT or open the device
| (MAC address, DHCP assigned IP) up (afaik most ISPs
| control the router too) for traffic to those sites.
|
| What I'm suggesting does not require abstinence from
| those who have the password.
| sv123 wrote:
| Maybe I'm daft but how would ISPs be able to control it?
| Solely based on domain name? What about porn intermixed
| with other content on sites like reddit?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > (I'm talking best effort not a perfect implementation)
|
| Correct. The first iterative step would be to simply
| block the big obvious domains and sources escalating the
| arms race. It will never be possible to keep 100% of porn
| out of your kids' hands, but just like alcohol,
| cigarettes, and getting behind a car we can setup a
| better starting point than "Do you promise you're older
| than 18/19/21? YES/NO"
|
| It's a bit absurd that providing alcohol to minor is
| punishable by a fine, but we give the internet/porn
| industry a free pass. Also if you were to hand out porn
| to a minor you'd probably be hit with some kind of charge
| (inviting a minor to some sexuality), but the Porn
| industry is handing it out en masse without any
| repercussion
| dclusin wrote:
| I recently bought age restricted materials online and had
| to upload a picture of my photo id with a selfie to a 3rd
| party verifier. Similar to what crypto currency
| verification goes through.
|
| I think the underlying disagreement/debate is whether or
| not these initiatives are in good faith. Any implementation
| of this is going to be imperfect and a motivated person
| will probably be able to get around this. So the debate, I
| think, is, if we implement this are we going to
| incrementally improve it? Or is it just a pretext to point
| to and say, hey look, this can never work perfectly, so we
| should ban x, y, and z.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Good faith is insufficient for me and what I would expect
| are a majority of users (not speaking strictly about
| porn, social media is coming under scrutiny with similar
| proposed solutions). Many good faith actors experience
| data breaches, often from internal attacks.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _If it's not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn't
| phase you anymore than verifying your age to buy alcohol._
|
| If the cashier asks for your ID when you buy a six-pack,
| that's completely ephemeral, with no record created. If they
| swipe your ID (I think this happens sometimes), that creates
| a record, but it's not clear if it stores personal info or
| just verifies that it's a valid ID with appropriate
| birthdate.
|
| If you verify your age to view online pornography, there's no
| way to do so ephemerally, at least that most people would
| trust. I think most people who oppose these types of rules
| wouldn't have a problem with showing ID at an adult shop to
| buy an adult DVD (but I could be wrong).
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > What I can't understand is if the people in camp 2 are so
| unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification
| such a big deal?
|
| a) It's economically implausible. Age verification is very
| expensive, and the requirement means that many sites that
| currently permit adult content will ban it rather than pay
| for verification (Twitter bans sex workers in Germany rather
| than pay for verification).
|
| b) It doesn't work - it just pushes audiences to pirate
| content, because pirate sites don't give a stuff about
| verification, and don't take down content of individuals
| distributed without their consent, and steals from content
| creators.
|
| c) It's not safe - there are multiple instances of systems
| being breached, which can put the safety of performers and
| other groups at jeopardy.
|
| d) It enables incredibly bad legislation from political
| groups who are not benign.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you
| ever take a look at it again before you are married.
|
| It turns out, a mother's nipple has a far different effect on
| an infant than a young adult female nipple does on a teenage
| boy. If this is difficult for you to grasp, then you should
| consider stepping away from this conversation, as there is
| clearly nuance here that the average person can easily
| understand but that you can't.
|
| > What's wrong with these people?
|
| What's wrong with you?
|
| > Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in
| California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this
| subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here).
|
| I don't think "arbitrary" means what you think it means. Just
| because people don't all agree on the definition of something
| doesn't make one person's definition arbitrary.
|
| > Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on.
|
| "Education" has nothing to do with it. Pornography has been
| proven to be devastatingly harmful for many, many people. There
| is no world in which you can be morally consistent, for
| instance, in supporting an age minimum for alcohol consumption
| but not for pornography consumption.
|
| > On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations
| like https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to
| citizens in states that'd rather have you wear a burka than
| show a nipple.
|
| If your moral code drives you to make the world a better place
| by liberating people from restrictions on viewing pornography,
| then I contend that your moral code is corrupt or severely
| misguided.
| solarmist wrote:
| If your moral code dictates what other people can or cannot
| do with their own lives in their homes then I contend that
| your moral code may be corrupt or severely misguided.
| [deleted]
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > If your moral code dictates what other people can or
| cannot do with their own lives
|
| That's literally the point of law. One person writes the
| law, and it dictates what others can and can't do with
| their lives. Are you an anarchist? Or are you just not
| thinking clearly about what you are saying?
|
| If thing X demonstrably causes major harm to individuals,
| then it is often in the purview of government to restrict
| adults from exposing minors to X.
|
| I think you should reflect a little on what you actually
| believe and why you believe it.
| haldujai wrote:
| I'm unclear whether you're arguing that
| obscene/pornographic material should be
| accessible/distributed to minors as the distinction here is
| that this activity is in fact a federal crime in the US
| (and most of the world).
|
| The government unequivocally has the right and obligation
| to enforce federal law. To what extent and by which
| mechanisms they should do this is a different question
| altogether but this issue is hardly about 'dictating what
| other people can do with their own lives in their homes' as
| was the case with other laws like anti-LGBT.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Like viewing child porn?
| erenyeager wrote:
| I think a good way to combat pornography companies is to smother
| them in liability problems. Absolute many children and adults
| have had negative externalities due to the spread of pornography
| in society and specially use of it on phones and in computers. It
| is not healthy or normal or good for so much of growing teens'
| attention to be focused and spent on these deeply harmful things.
| I know growing up that pornography led me as a minor to engaging
| in sexual conversations and sending nudes to adults and other
| minors, helped by apps like Kik, Snapchat, Reddit, etc.
| absolutely these companies all need to be held more accountable
| for the effects of NSFW activity on their platforms.
| [deleted]
| phatboyslim wrote:
| Pornography, social media, 24/7 news... will all be looked back
| on in history as having profound negative mental health effects,
| akin to how we today view smoking in the 1950s. There is a
| mountain of growing evidence that this is verifiably true. The
| exact means that Utah is using to provide ID check may be for
| debate, but the concept there should be an age restriction,
| liable to the ISP or the content provider, should not be in
| dispute.
| shrimpx wrote:
| How much liability should go to parents? There are myriad tools
| on the market for blocking porn on devices.
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| What alternative means do you see as having the potential to be
| effective? Is there a version that does not require unmasking
| everyone just to identify the children?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Exactly, see https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
| int_19h wrote:
| The guy behind this website is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Wilson_(author)
| pnt12 wrote:
| Thanks for the link. It's surprising how much credit is
| given to a charlatan, even in hacker news.
| loeg wrote:
| It's one guy spamming the same link over and over.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I am interested in how the Christian nationalist agenda of
| targeting porn, abortion, trans-people and immigrants will play
| out. It seems that regression of societal freedoms is happening
| in Red American states.
| Eumenes wrote:
| [flagged]
| theclansman wrote:
| The porn industry exploits vulnerable women and ruins their
| lives, forces them to do stuff they never signed for and much
| more. You trying to paint this issue as a white and black
| political thing makes you dismiss all the victims from this
| industry. You're basically dismissing it as "if you're part of
| this specific political team you should support/be against
| this"
| Invictus0 wrote:
| This law has nothing to do with performers and their safety
| whatsoever
| honkycat wrote:
| Yes and you pointing out victimization in the industry, a lot
| of which stems from the industry's "black sheep" status, also
| paints the issue as black and white.
| temp23443223443 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > "Targeting trans people"
|
| To be clear, this is what (many) progressives call policies
| like "making it illegal to mutilate the genitals of children,"
| or "keeping men out of women's prisons."
|
| Some parts of the right-wing social agenda (abortion
| restrictions, for example) are broadly unpopular. But
| protecting people from the gender cult is a winning issue
| politically.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| [flagged]
| jofer wrote:
| At the risk of starting a flame war, many of the current
| bills have absurdly broad language which makes it a crime to
| simply be in public dressed differently than your gender
| assigned at birth (i.e. somewhere where a minor _might_ be
| present). It's hard to argue the legislation that's being
| proposed (and passed) at a state and local level isn't having
| the effect of making it difficult to simply exist as a trans
| person.
|
| Yes, much of that legislation is probably unconstitutional,
| but there is still a very real possibility of local law
| enforcement arresting someone who's violating these laws by
| simply walking down the street or visiting relatives.
|
| I don't doubt that some of the broad brush legislation is at
| odds with many conservative individual's beliefs and intents
| for it, but the legislation being proposed and passed at a
| local and state level is quite concerning. It's a bit hard
| _not_ to see it as an attack.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| could you cite these bills? I am curious
| jofer wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Senate_Bill_3
| is a good example.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Just gave it a once over - This is precisely what I was
| talking about - This is a bill which prohibits drag shows
| which appeal to a prurient interest from being open to
| all ages. How on earth is this "going after trans
| people". This is "Don't let kids into highly sexualized
| events - events which have lately allowed underage people
| to attend"
|
| This seem reasonable to me, and even if its not
| reasonable, it is hardly "going after trans people".
| jofer wrote:
| The issue is the way it's defined and the language in the
| law.
|
| What defines "drag"? As that legislation is currently
| written, it can be interpreted to be someone simply
| appearing in public.
|
| That aside, though, I don't see how banning things like
| drag queen storytime (which has happened locally here)
| are somehow a ban on sexualized events. How is that
| sexualized?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The whole "attack woke & trans" thing played well with
| independents for a bit, but it's gotten tired and now it just
| looks angry and petty. Add in Nazi-like stuff we're seeing in
| states like Tennessee, and the anti-education/environment
| policy proposals, and the Republican party has backed itself
| into a tough spot that even their egregious gerrymandering
| might not save them from.
| jacquesm wrote:
| With the supreme court stacked the way it is that may no
| longer matter as much as it did once.
| myrryr wrote:
| given all the other places where it has been tried. "poorly" is
| the likely answer.
| ipunchghosts wrote:
| can you give examples? genuinely curios
| kneebonian wrote:
| Utah has some of the strictest trans rights laws in the
| country.
| ben_w wrote:
| Tangential question: given the Cold War memes of the "red
| scare" and "better dead than red", how/why did the Republican
| Party decide to keep that colour scheme?
|
| I mean, if even the British Royal Family had to change its name
| from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of
| Windsor...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > how/why did the Republican Party decide to keep that colour
| scheme?
|
| According to the Tampa Bay Times, the colors are fairly
| recent and largely a result of media depictions of electoral
| maps. It is not an official choice by the party.
|
| https://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/visualarts/the-
| origins...
| delecti wrote:
| I can't vouch for it's accuracy, but it seems that the
| association of red/blue with republicans/democrats was only
| solidified in the 2000 election. https://www.quora.com/Why-
| did-the-Republican-party-choose-re...
|
| I'm also seeing a variety of results saying that prior to
| that, the incumbent party was typically shown as blue on
| graphics, and the challenging party was red. In 2000, those
| colors lined up with the current party associations (Gore
| being a dem like Clinton), and that election cycle was a
| publicized enough election that the colors stuck to the
| parties.
| sellyme wrote:
| That's the trick: they didn't keep it at all. By the time
| that colour scheme arose, the Cold War was long finished.
|
| The idea of colour-coding the parties at all didn't really
| become widespread until 1980, and the exact colours in use
| weren't standard until the aftermath of the 2000 election -
| ABC had initially used yellow for Republicans, and even as
| late as 1996 The Washington Post, Time, and NBC were all
| still using blue for Republicans and red for Democrats, in
| line with the colour schemes of most other nations.
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| The Dems = blue/Reps = red thing wasn't actually a consistent
| thing until the 2000 election, when news agencies seemed to
| all start using it that way for electoral maps.
| nahnahg wrote:
| [dead]
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Pornhub reportedly says that rather than requiring
| identification, it's better to "identify users by their device" -
| what does that mean? If you're going to require ID, what does it
| matter how you acquire that ID?
| shhsshs wrote:
| I am guessing something like the device knows its owner is
| under 18, and websites can query "is the user under 18" to
| disable itself.
| mminer237 wrote:
| So it would be up to Google and Microsoft to verify people's
| IDs, tie their identities to their devices, and ensure only
| verified persons use a device? That sounds 1000% worse for
| privacy.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Google already does this for Youtube due to EU legislation.
| They allow using a credit card to verify or using standard
| government ID.
|
| Then again, a 1 cent credit card validation charge isn't
| going to stop any kids from using the magic digits printed
| on their parents' cards so that system probably wouldn't
| hold up.
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| I think more like, parents can enable parental control on
| their kid devices?
|
| Not saying it's a good idea, that feels ripe for abuse if
| you can more or less identify minors just by looking at
| their requests... (or via JS)
| [deleted]
| taylodl wrote:
| The funny thing is the minors know how to use a VPN to get around
| this law whereas the many older users don't! So, in Utah the
| minors will be able to access porn and many of the adults will
| not!
|
| Good job Utah!
| theclansman wrote:
| Not quite, have you not been following the news that new
| generations are worse with technology than the previous ones?
| Minors barely know how to use a computer nowadays, they only
| use smart phones.
| bitwize wrote:
| Today's video is sponsored by NordVPN. Prevent hackers,
| governments, and ISPs from accessing your private data with a
| VPN -- or Virtual Private Network -- from NordVPN. Plus, you
| can access the internet from any of over 120 countries. I
| can't get Naruto on Netflix in the United States, but with
| NordVPN I just switch my country to Belarus and look, there
| it is!
| hbn wrote:
| Every third YouTube video has a pause at midroll for the host
| of the video to thank the sponsor, a VPN service. Smart
| phones can use VPNs, even iPhones. Kids know about them, and
| they certainly will when they see 20 second tutorials on
| Tiktok for how to access state-blocked sites.
| vlunkr wrote:
| You can use a VPN from a phone. So the point stands.
| chippy wrote:
| It's a myth that "prohibition doesn't work" which is one of the
| roots of this type of thinking. It does actually work (e.g.
| reduce alcoholism, increase health) but it also leads to the
| increase in organized crime which became much more of a
| problem.
| mbs159 wrote:
| The increase of organized crime and the spawning of a giant
| black market do not seem to be indicators that prohibition
| "worked".
|
| Also, during prohibition it was more efficient to smuggle
| stronger alcoholic drinks due to the fact that a bottle of
| whiskey can hold more standard drinks than a bottle of beer
| (30 ml whiskey ~ 285 ml beer). From what I red in Johann
| Hari's Chasing the Scream [1], this seemed to contribute to
| spirits becoming more available than lighter alcoholic
| beverages.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_Scream
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Muslims have been very successfull in prohibiton of all
| kinds of drugs and alcohol since 15 centuries.
|
| There are clearly more factors at play than what the law
| says. What do you believe will happen if you drink alcohol
| in secret, out of range of the eyes of the State? Muslims
| believe this will still have consequences in afterlife.
| Atheists don't. Many Christians believe they'll be saved
| and forgiven by God as long as they are Christian.
|
| > A 2012 study suggested that belief in hell decreases
| crime rates, while belief in heaven increases them, and
| indicated that these correlations were stronger than other
| correlates like national wealth or income inequality.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_correlations_of_c
| r...
| rayiner wrote:
| Maybe that was true for millennials vis-a-vis boomers. But Gen
| Z is far less tech savvy than millennials or Gen X. My parents
| couldn't have blocked my access to anything. But my wife and I
| can easily do so with our kids.
| taylodl wrote:
| Kids have a knack for learning what they need to learn. Need
| a VPN to view porn? They'll get it figured out!
| nemo44x wrote:
| The previous owners of PornHub smartly sold the business earlier
| this year. The writing is on the wall w/r/t hyper regulating the
| internet. Not to mention the rapid advances in video AI which
| will render a lot of pornography and distributors in particular
| as obsolete.
| wyldberry wrote:
| Way late to this, but to me this ultimately comes down to:
|
| "How do we handle the negative externalities that access to the
| worlds information at our fingertips has caused?"
|
| In theory parents are responsible for general outcomes of their
| children.
|
| However, do you expect non-tech, and realistically, non
| security/networking people to have the toolset to understand how
| to set up their networks and their devices to block access to
| this content? It's already a hard problem to solve in enterprise,
| or at least non Gov/Defense enterprises (hello Bluecoat?).
|
| A company has no incentive to block users from their content like
| this unless their is a negative effect from letting someone view
| it who shouldn't. They say "you're the parent block it". It's
| almost as if a child walked into a bar and said "give me a beer"
| and the bartender did. Then didn't get in trouble because "the
| parent should have stopped it".
| johnnymorgan wrote:
| In other news, VPN subscription sales explode in Utah!
|
| easy sales opportunity
| thebooktocome wrote:
| What's weird is, from my reading of the law in question, a
| minor using either a VPN or a stolen ID card to access PornHub
| is a violation. . . for PornHub.
|
| That seems a little wonky to me.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Similar to FOSTA-SESTA, I'd guess that _de facto_
| recriminalizing sex work is largely seen as, at an absolute
| minimum, a happy side effect by the bill 's authors.
| ttpphd wrote:
| Spot on comparison!
| Szpadel wrote:
| you can just enable the camera and show your ID and someone
| on the other side will check if that's you /s
| denton-scratch wrote:
| From my reading, this is just another attempt to bypass 1st
| Amendment by allowing a civil suit against a porn-merchant by
| members of the public: if the entity imposing censorship
| isn't the government, then it doesn't fall foul of the 1st.
| stinos wrote:
| My guess would be: more visitors to <insert any other easily
| accessible porn site or download client here> from Utah?
| mabbo wrote:
| You would be surprised how many are owned by the same parent
| company as Pornhub. Mindgeek own a massive amount of the
| internet's porn.
| capableweb wrote:
| Is the (self-imposed) block Mindgeek-wide or just PornHub?
| Judging by the articles about it, it seems to just be
| PornHub (for now).
| dspillett wrote:
| Yes. Though I suspect a lot of users know the site by
| reputation and may not specifically know others other than
| indirectly when they search (google/bing) or are linked to
| them from elsewhere (reddit, etc.). For those people the
| constant VPN advertising via sponsorship of podcasts and
| youtube channels will attract a number of users. The other
| porn sites can't advertise in those mediums.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I was thinking about this. Do sites like Pornhub use DRM in
| their players? Asking because AFAIK browsers will pass a
| network ID that does not change when DRM is used. In Firefox it
| is in "about:networking#networkid" and they don't make it easy
| to change that. I believe Chrome has something similar. I think
| it also uses serial numbers? Could be I am mixing up
| identifiers used in DRM vs. browser specific integrations.
| loeg wrote:
| I don't believe they use DRM.
| hgsgm wrote:
| This is part of Pornhub's counterproposal: Verify user ID on
| client side, pair with deice, and approve device ID for adult
| services.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I'm not sure that's relevant. I assume you're suggesting that
| a user who had accessed the site from Utah could be
| perpetually flagged as someone who should be blocked.
| However, that would mean visitors to Utah or anyone no longer
| residing there could be permanently blacklisted
| unnecessarily.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I'm not actually sure what I am suggesting to be honest. I
| just had these little voices in the back of my head saying
| to finish researching the various identifiers used by DRM.
| And I think you are right, if such things were used then
| people might have to prove they moved and it would be a
| PITA for everyone involved.
| worldsavior wrote:
| Damn they're gonna be rich.
| sambull wrote:
| My EARN IT Not a VPN traffic mover is in stealth mode
| awill88 wrote:
| Oh yyyyeaaahhh
| ytreyrty wrote:
| lots of porn addicts freaking out in here lmao
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Pornography is a (scientifically proven) drug which harms both
| body and brain. Ban it everywhere. For info on research, see
| https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
| vlunkr wrote:
| I hope these laws don't devolve into a special internet for Utah
| (and maybe more red states in the future). Remember this is about
| social media too.
|
| This is eventually going to hit even Hacker News if the law is
| actually effective. Is HN going to jump through the hoops of
| complying with the law or just block Utah?
| evantbyrne wrote:
| Unfortunately, it isn't just smut on the internet that's being
| locked down. Red state politicians are doing everything they
| can to curtail freedom of speech and expression. First it's
| just about protecting children, then they go after adults. We
| are already seeing this play out with LGBT rights in other
| places. I never thought I would see such extreme changes in
| legal speech take place between red and blue states in my
| lifetime. The last couple years have been wild.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Realistically this is what Utah wants. Only 60% of Utah
| residents are Mormon, but 85%+ of their elected state
| representatives and senators are Mormon. They are happy to
| force the rest of society to carve out a space "just for them",
| which is pretty much in line with their entire history anyway.
| vlunkr wrote:
| There are conspiracy theories that this is actually all about
| "anti Mormon" content on Reddit (and apparently it's big on
| TikTok?)
|
| It's a conspiracy that I could probably buy into.
| themitigating wrote:
| What about people in Utah who don't want this? You don't like
| porn don't use it. You don't want your kids to watch it, stop
| them. Restricting the freedom of everyone is unacceptable
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > You don't like racism and homophobia then don't visit
| these sites. Restricting the freedom of everone is
| unacceptable
|
| Nno no no bros, not like that. (I'll show myself out.)
| themitigating wrote:
| Racism and homophobia aren't banned so what is your
| argument?
|
| If you don't like racism or porn sites don't go to them.
| honkycat wrote:
| yes I would sincerely argue this.
|
| What are you even trying to say? Is that not how it works
| currently? Freaking chud-brains lol.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It makes them feel bad when other people do it. Combined
| with a majority in govt, the results are predictable.
| nimbius wrote:
| from a programmatic standpoint i think it is both easier and
| more ethical to simply block utah. Im working on a python
| library now that should easily remove the threat of utah from
| the internet in most cases, and can be rapidly deployed should
| anyone suspect utah on their local networks or extranets.
|
| EDIT: i am told this is due to a specific law in utah and has
| nothing to do with the numerous well respected and certainly
| not crackpot theorists I subscribe to.
| miroljub wrote:
| Pornhub forced to block Utah, but not Iran.
|
| One state is a democracy, the other is an undemocratic clerical
| state.
|
| Now, close your eyes and try to guess which is which.
| ctvo wrote:
| > One state is a democracy, the other is an undemocratic
| clerical state.
|
| > Now, close your eyes and try to guess which is which.
|
| Utah is the democracy? Doesn't seem too tough. Their elected
| officials passed a law, we assume with the will of the people.
| You disagreeing with the law doesn't change their status as a
| democracy.
|
| > Pornhub forced to block Utah, but not Iran.
|
| One has enforcement mechanisms that can actually hurt Pornhub,
| and the other is Iran. Big ole shrug here too.
| ytreyrty wrote:
| it's interesting how the biggest defenders of "democracy"
| always have a problem when democracy is used to implement
| something they dont like.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, its always surprising that the set of people thar
| believe that the populace at large should have control of
| policy overlaps with the set that have strong opinions
| about the content of policy.
|
| I mean, except that that's really not even a little bit
| surprising.
|
| (Neither, really, is the fact--which seems more relevant
| here--that people raised in the context where _liberal
| democracy_ is idealized often have trouble separating out
| the "liberal" and "democratic" elements of that system, and
| frequently confuse the construct as "democracy" and view
| democratic illiberalism as "undemocratic".)
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| The answer to your riddle is: Utah is the democracy. Plain and
| simple. The democratically-elected representatives of Utah are
| passing legislation that represents the interests of the
| majority of its population.
| woeirua wrote:
| It makes no sense to me that every physical store in a state must
| check IDs if you want to buy porn or alcohol, but porn websites
| can just let anyone in without checking ID.
|
| There are legitimate privacy concerns with checking ID online,
| but I think it's way past time that the government does something
| to restrict the supply of porn to minors via the internet.
|
| The same with social media. The evidence that social media causes
| harm to minors is clear and compelling.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >It makes no sense to me that every physical store in a state
| must check IDs if you want to buy porn or alcohol, but porn
| websites can just let anyone in without checking ID.
|
| So.. what, you have to enter a license number or a picture of a
| license to let people into a porn website? How does that prove
| anything other than someone has access to a license
| number/picture?
|
| >There are legitimate privacy concerns with checking ID online,
| but I think it's way past time that the government does
| something to restrict the supply of porn to minors via the
| internet.
|
| First... how?
|
| Second.. I sure as shit don't want that. Most people don't want
| that. Mostly religious nutjobs do, and politicians pretend like
| they care just to keep on good terms with religious nuts.
|
| >The evidence that social media causes harm to minors is clear
| and compelling.
|
| I'm not advocating for social media here- but no one being
| objective about the subject would ever speak that way. You
| obviously have a "PROTECT THE CHILDREN!" mentality and want to
| legislate everything with no respect to anything else. At least
| just be straight forward instead of trying to make silly
| arguments.
| woeirua wrote:
| > So.. what, you have to enter a license number or a picture
| of a license to let people into a porn website? How does that
| prove anything other than someone has access to a license
| number/picture?
|
| It's still a barrier to entry and will stop some kids. Sure,
| kids can still get fake IDs or use their parents so this wont
| stop everyone but no law ever will stop everyone.
|
| > First... how?
|
| Don't know. Let's let the people who have the most interest
| here figure out a workable way around this.
|
| > Second.. I sure as shit don't want that. Most people don't
| want that. Mostly religious nutjobs do, and politicians
| pretend like they care just to keep on good terms with
| religious nuts.
|
| You may not. But I'm not a religious nut job, in fact I'm a
| frequent user of online porn and have for almost 20 years
| now. That said, I think I'm mature enough now to recognize
| how fucked up a lot of stuff online is. And now that I have
| kids, I can see that the status quo is probably not where we
| want to be on this issue. Not necessarily for my kids (I can
| put strong content filtering on my networks), but for other
| people who aren't nearly as tech savvy.
|
| > I'm not advocating for social media here- but no one being
| objective about the subject would ever speak that way. You
| obviously have a "PROTECT THE CHILDREN!" mentality and want
| to legislate everything with no respect to anything else. At
| least just be straight forward instead of trying to make
| silly arguments.
|
| Looks pretty compelling to me:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3919760
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >Don't know. Let's let the people who have the most
| interest here figure out a workable way around this.
|
| You don't think people have thought about this shit since
| the internet started? There is literally no viable way-
| otherwise it probably would have already happened.
|
| So honestly the entire argument is completely moot unless
| you want us to video chat with someone to verify our
| identity and age before we decide to search for a naughty
| image.
| woeirua wrote:
| No, that is not what happened. State governments
| initially _did_ put into place age verification
| restrictions. Those restrictions were struck down by the
| Supreme Court in Ashcroft v ACLU because SCOTUS believed
| that content filtering could be a suitable alternative.
| 20 years later, we know that content filtering is an
| abject failure. So the states are passing these laws to
| get before SCOTUS again to overturn Ashcroft v ACLU.
|
| The market never did this because they never had to
| before, and the internet has also drastically changed
| since this was first brought up.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Does it have to be the government? Isn't this what parental
| controls are for
| belorn wrote:
| You do not need it to be the government to provide a protocol
| for identification. In Sweden they already done this by
| offloading it to banks, which can be seen as a benefit or
| drawback based on who you ask.
|
| Personally I would like to see something like letsencrypt to
| take the role of central identification authority, with
| multiple open protocols available to prove identification.
| Neither governments or banks should be the single source for
| identity. Trust is a hard problem to solve with technology,
| and neither government nor for-profit organizations tend to
| be very good at it.
| woeirua wrote:
| Utah hasn't said what the solution has to be, just that age
| verification needs to take place.
|
| I think the market should find the best solution here.
| juve1996 wrote:
| The market has - exiting the market is the best solution
| right now.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I checked wikipedia at the age of 11 (21yrs ago) and learned
| every kind of fetish in existence. There are enough ways for
| parents to educate and limit access to things.
| woeirua wrote:
| Reading a description is very different than seeing and
| listening to simulated rape or sexual assault.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| There are about a gazillion porn websites and legislation only
| affects the top like 3 of them. Completely pointless unless you
| have an entire surveillance system like China's firewall
| woeirua wrote:
| A lot of those porn sites also are not free ( so
| automatically age restricted).
|
| PornHub is somewhat unique in that it's so large and totally
| free.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >PornHub is somewhat unique in that it's so large and
| totally free.
|
| Uh.. no..
|
| And how about you just go to google/bing whatever and
| search for some porn. It will come right up.
|
| You are completely bonkers if you think free porn is
| somewhat unique to pornhub.
| woeirua wrote:
| I never said that. I said that its unique in how wide its
| reach is. Yes, you can find porn on Google if you turn
| off SafeSearch. Yes there are other PornTube sites out
| there. But if you dig deep enough I bet you'd find that
| most of them are owned by MindGeek too. MindGeek has the
| lion's share of the market right now by far.
| least wrote:
| It's unique in that it is as close to public facing as a
| pornography website gets, but it's not unique whatsoever in
| being large and free.
| naravara wrote:
| You don't need a surveillance system you just need a
| framework for people to sue for damages.
| 3np wrote:
| > It makes no sense to me that every physical store in a state
| must check IDs if you want to buy porn
|
| Right?
| woeirua wrote:
| Your position is that a 12 year old should be able to buy any
| porn that they want?
| 3np wrote:
| No.
| whalesalad wrote:
| this is absolutely not the job of the government. you are
| responsible for your kids. this is just inviting more and more
| police state big brother bureaucratic bullshit and less rights,
| less freedom.
| woeirua wrote:
| Then why do we have laws restricting the access of minors to
| various goods in stores? By the way, those laws are broadly
| popular.
| zamadatix wrote:
| People don't (generally) want to stand next to a 13 year
| old while looking at what porn/sex toys to buy, but beyond
| that it's pretty much the same argument. Alcohol/drug sale
| restrictions are probably the more interesting half but I'm
| not so sure drugs and media are fungible. After all, there
| are valid places to draw the line beyond "no government
| involvement on anything whatsoever" and "government
| involvement on everything moral because we did it on one
| thing".
| woeirua wrote:
| > People don't (generally) want to stand next to a 13
| year old while looking at what porn/sex toys to buy, but
| beyond that it's pretty much the same argument
|
| That is not why people don't want kids in sex shops.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Correct, it does, however, make it extremely hard to find
| many willing to argue against status quo though.
| Aachen wrote:
| I've never seen an adult store check age in the Netherlands.
| Children just aren't interested until they're ready for it. I
| assume a store owner is legally in the clear when serving a
| five year old, even if in practice they would ask for their
| caretaker's phone number and send them home.
|
| Is that actually required and enforced in the USA?
| woeirua wrote:
| Yes.
| Aachen wrote:
| Odd. Well, I suppose you're right that's unequal
| requirements in an equal situation, though I'd propose the
| solution is to remove that law rather than extending it.
| Simulacra wrote:
| It seems most people recognize that the proliferation of easily-
| available porn has been a detriment to society, but short of
| blocking it there has been no proposals for rectifying the
| situation. IMHO society seems to have just shrugged its
| collective shoulders about it, especially about kids watching
| porn and the greater availability of it.
|
| I guess we should get used to a future where porn is freely
| available to everyone, at every age, because it doesn't appear to
| be slowing down.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > It seems most people recognize that the proliferation of
| easily-available porn has been a detriment to society
|
| I have not heard of this consensus. Where can I find out about
| it?
| Simulacra wrote:
| Do you think porn has been good for society?
| loeg wrote:
| I certainly don't think it has been a detriment, which was
| your original claimed consensus viewpoint. (You have since
| moved the goalposts).
| Eisenstein wrote:
| In some ways.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Maybe not societal consensus yet, but research is clear:
| https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
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