[HN Gopher] Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free sp...
___________________________________________________________________
Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex
writing online
Author : macawfish
Score : 322 points
Date : 2025-07-12 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ellsberg.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ellsberg.substack.com)
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's funny that stuff like this flies under the radar, while HN
| users are still splitting hairs over cookie banners and Manifest
| V3. A week-old ruling comes as imminent surprise to the Hackers
| and their cohorts.
|
| Just looking at HN's frontpage, you'd have no idea that anyone
| here cares about privacy or freedom.
| bryancoxwell wrote:
| This is on the front page.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's a week-old secondary source that had to editorialize the
| title.
|
| If this is "news" then tomorrow I should expect to see
| articles reporting Lincoln's death at the top of /active.
| alwa wrote:
| Where should we turn to be more promptly and fully informed
| about questions like these?
| arp242 wrote:
| A week old? That's practically ancient, and certainly no
| longer applies to the situation today!
| munchler wrote:
| I haven't seen this aspect of the ruling discussed anywhere
| else either, so I don't know why you're picking on HN in
| particular.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's because we're hackers and we're too cool to be bothered
| with pesky politics. /s
|
| On a more serious note: HN tries hard to stay in its lane, but
| there are quite a few people on here that are engaging in
| political activism, but that every now and then make a
| (sometimes even useful) tech comment to avoid the activism ban
| hammer.
|
| Personally I don't really see the difference between 'curious
| conversation' vs 'click bait' and 'rage bait'. Examples abound,
| but the balance as it is struck right now picks a reasonable
| median between 400 hour work weeks for the people involved and
| some kind of manageable work/life balance. It works, but barely
| and it is still worth reading but I find myself getting more
| and more cynical reading HN. Oh, and of course we really don't
| do humor.
|
| And some people here really do care about both privacy and
| freedom, and some people are not absolutists but rather see
| that there are reasonable limits to both of these. Another
| thing to remember is that HN is global, you're going to find a
| predominantly English speaking audience here but so many people
| around the world manage to express themselves reasonably well
| in English that you will find all kinds of cultures represented
| here, including ones that have entirely different ideas on
| subjects such as freedom and privacy. And then there are the
| tech bros who want freedom and privacy for themselves and less
| of both of those for the rest of us.
| getoj wrote:
| What sites/communities keep up with things like this more
| actively? I'd love to read them too. Drop a link!
| gchamonlive wrote:
| You must be hurting from patting yourself in the back. You
| should first remember that front page is a matter not only of
| interest to the community, but timing, luck and moment. It's
| meaningless that it took a week to be in the front page. It's
| there now and we are discussing it. And it also doesn't
| diminish the value of other discussions that is dear to HN
| readers.
|
| If you feel like antagonizing an entire community, maybe you
| should consider just leaving it and finding your own group.
| It'll be hard for us but we'll make it here without you.
| everdrive wrote:
| It's right on the front page of HN and there's a lively
| discussion. I'm just not sure your criticism holds up.
| viccis wrote:
| It's kind of funny to be whining about this in a frontpage post
| here, but that aside, this doesn't add anything to discussion.
| You should probably keep these things to yourself.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| It received 200+ comments at the time it happened...
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44397799
| Terr_ wrote:
| Exposure != Accumulated comments, especially if you aren't
| counting _distinct_ authors.
|
| Dig a little deeper, and you'll see that particular
| submission ("US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law") was
| visible on the front page for _barely five minutes_ [0]
| before something abruptly exiled it to to the end of the
| second page and a slide into obscurity.
|
| In contrast, I randomly picked something from several pages
| down today that which looks bland with triple-digit comments,
| and got "A Typology of Candianisms." Turns out that has _even
| more_ comments (327!) and was visible on the front page for
| about _twenty hours_ [1].
|
| Quite a difference, isn't it? I'm not against the idea that
| HN needs to guard its content-mix, but we should not live in
| denial about it happening.
|
| [0] https://hnrankings.info/44397799/
|
| [1] https://hnrankings.info/44515101/
| nothrowaways wrote:
| Does it have to be written? Does it apply to video and audio
| contents of similar manners?
| macawfish wrote:
| I don't think it has to be written or even particularly
| raunchy, just has to be deemed "damaging to children".
|
| Looking at banned children's books should fine you an idea of
| the offline precedent here.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| "Party of free speech," my ass.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Free speech for me, not for thee
| barbazoo wrote:
| Virtue signalling Christian values, obviously that overrides
| free speech.
| ttul wrote:
| The GOP under Trump has considerably changed from the GOP under
| Bush. There is no longer a political home for Reagan/Bush-style
| conservatives. Perhaps a shift might be coming with the next
| economic downturn, which seems inevitable given the risk-off
| investment climate across most industries stemming from Trump's
| erratic, unpredictable trade and economic policy. Things don't
| look bad just yet, but it takes a while for the full impact of
| such enormous changes in sentiment to ripple down through the
| entire economy.
| toyg wrote:
| _> There is no longer a political home for Reagan /Bush-style
| conservatives_
|
| That's funny, considering Bush II effectively established the
| coalition of business interests, religious zealots, and
| neofascist militias, which then expanded to be the backbone
| of Trump's support. Cautionary tale about consequences of
| one's political choices? I wish.
| tomrod wrote:
| Libertarian and Democratic parties ought to feel right at
| home for any refugees from the GOP who have conservative
| principles. Democratic party is right of center.
| yardie wrote:
| Reagan and Bush were constrained by much more liberal supreme
| court justices of the previous era. The current Supreme Court
| justices were clerks and lawyers during Reagan and Bush
| presidency. If Reagan and Bush had the current justices in
| their bench I can almost guarantee they'd be pulling the same
| stunts.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Bush wasn't exactly a steward of free speech
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > There is no longer a political home for Reagan/Bush-style
| conservatives.
|
| There is, they just don't like it for aesthetic and/or
| historical reasons.
|
| The faction that currently runs the Democratic party is the
| centrist, deficit-reducing, foreign-intervention-when-
| necessary party of Reagan/Bush.
|
| If the centrists and moderate conservatives could make common
| cause, they would easily shut out both the far left and far
| right wings of American politics. The demographics are there.
|
| I think the main wedge preventing this unification is still
| abortion, and to a lesser extent LGBTQ rights. But it's so
| weird to see two political factions that agree on 90% of
| policy get shellacked and overruled by their respective
| extreme wings. Real tail wagging the dog stuff.
| tyre wrote:
| > it's so weird to see two political factions that agree on
| 90% of policy get shellacked and overruled by their
| respective extreme wings
|
| These parties have primaries and Republicans are choosing--
| by a majority--the crazies over the "traditional" wing.
| They aren't extremists. They are the party views.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Most moderates don't vote in the primaries. The hardcore
| extremists vote unfailingly.
| donatj wrote:
| Primaries are primarily voted in by crazies. Regular
| people have lives and jobs.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > These parties have primaries and Republicans are
| choosing--by a majority--the crazies over the
| "traditional" wing.
|
| Elections are by and large not contests of policy, and I
| think it's likely that most American voters (across the
| spectrum, not just the GOP) aren't voting in their own
| self-interest anymore.
| istjohn wrote:
| I worry that young people across the political spectrum
| increasingly no longer see free speech as a foundational value.
| Both sides pay lip service and deploy it strategically but are
| quick to sacrifice it when it conflicts with other values and
| goals.
|
| The ACLU won our expansive free speech protections defending
| the KKK in the 1950s. But today, the ACLU has become short-
| sighted. They are more concerned with social progressivism than
| the liberal foundations of our democracy which allow social
| progressives to continue fighting. Young progressives are happy
| to sacrifice free speech protections to prevent hate speech.
|
| On the other hand, social conservatives have always been eager
| to curtail speech they consider obscene or liscentious, and now
| Trump is using executive powers to punish protesters, creating
| an authoritarian atmosphere unlike anything we've experienced
| since perhaps the McCarthy era.
|
| There are organisations like FIRE and EFF that give me some
| hope, but it increasingly feels like all sides would rather
| cement themselves in power than continue the infinite game of
| liberal democracy.
| myko wrote:
| > But today, the ACLU has become short-sighted. They are more
| concerned with social progressivism than the liberal
| foundations of our democracy which allow social progressives
| to continue fighting.
|
| Quite the opposite. I stopped donating to the ACLU after a
| few years of the last trump administration because I could no
| longer stomach it given the clear direction trumpism is
| taking the country. I still support the mission ideologically
| but can't back it up with my money. Seeing trump this time
| around I'm glad I haven't wasted the money - the constitution
| is dead.
| timeon wrote:
| I've found that "free speech" is important for Americans when
| it is about rights of Neo-Nazis but otherwise not so much.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's your "Small Government" in action, folks.
| al_borland wrote:
| All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting
| the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why
| would anyone trust some random blog with their ID?
|
| If these laws move forward (and I don't think they should), there
| needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending
| picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual
| personal details. I don't want to give this data, and websites
| shouldn't want to shoulder the responsibility for it.
|
| It seems like this could work much like Apple Pay, just without
| the payment. A prompt comes up, I use some biometric
| authentication on my phone, and it sends a signal to the browser
| that I'm 18+. Apple has been adding state IDs into the Wallet,
| this seems like it could fall right in line. The same thing could
| be used for buying alcohol at U-Scan checkout.
|
| People should also be able to set their browser/computer to auto-
| send this for single-user devices, where it is all transparent to
| the user. I don't have kids and no one else's uses my devices.
| Why should I need to jump through hoops?
| alwa wrote:
| And we could call this way... zero-knowledge proof! :)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
|
| I bet we could even get a major phone OS vendor to support such
| a thing...
|
| https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
| michaelt wrote:
| Do we expect Apple to implement a special, privacy-preserving
| age proof for porn viewers? Apple hates porn, when it's on
| websites like Tumblr.
| alwa wrote:
| At the same time they seem pragmatic about putting their
| mark on standards. It seems to me like we're at a
| confluence: a regulatory tipping point where there really
| is pressure to bring laws to bear on online harms affecting
| kids; and a socio-technological moment where "gotta
| distinguish kids from adults" can realistically happen
| separately from "...by handing over personal info directly
| to shady random counterparts."
|
| Individual smartphones with biometrics are these days a
| whole-of-society norm, technologists have developed a
| mature body of cryptographic work to assert ZKPs, the US
| population seem to have lost their aversion to centralized
| ID systems... and the periodic moral panic about the kids
| seems to be at a high tide.
|
| In the same way that Apple don't _prevent_ , say, Safari
| from being used for prurient purposes, or Final Cut Pro
| from being used to edit naughty bits, I don't see why they
| wouldn't want an opinionated implementation as a concept
| develops of a generic "digital tool to assert your age, and
| only that." Especially since Android is doing it and
| leaning into the privacy angle.
| meowkit wrote:
| Zero knowledge proof smart contract verification called by
| the site interested in your age. You provide your public
| key wallet with its government issued soul bound NFT of
| your identification.
|
| This can be done, its not that crazy, it just requires a
| bunch of people to get their heads out of their sand in
| regards to tech and blockchain, which admittedly might be a
| harder problem.
|
| ----
|
| Additonal thought- if you don't understand what I'm saying
| or have a negative reaction just plug the comment + thread
| context into an LLM and see what it says / ask for a
| clearer explanation.
| root_axis wrote:
| ZKP is all you need. The NFT or blockchain stuff is
| unnecessary can be discarded.
| tzs wrote:
| I expect Apple will implement a general privacy-preserving
| arbitrary attribute proof, with age proof just one of the
| things it could be used for, probably using something
| similar to the library that Google recently released [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457390
| macawfish wrote:
| Yet then again how hard is it to just grab your parents' id
| while their not looking and add it to your phone wallet?
| andrepd wrote:
| Eh. So now I'm forced to have all my IDs stored at an
| advertising behemoth. Not really a great situation either.
|
| You're practically forced to have a Google/Apple account and
| a google/apple smartphone to even exist in today's world.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I bet that in practice, at scale, these zero knowledge proofs
| end up being a lot more than zero.
|
| Not to mention that you're almost certainly going to have to
| tie this stuff to specific accounts that will then forever
| and ever keep your habits collected. One day somebody
| enterprising is going to add all that data together too.
| gxs wrote:
| There was a thread on reddit asking the other day what about
| the modern world bothers you the most
|
| I actually considered this question and after thinking about
| it, despite everything going on, I think it boils down to lack
| of privacy as my biggest gripe in the modern world
|
| It's such a tough concept to explain to the if you don't have
| anything to hide crowd, but if someone wants to disappear, I
| don't care if for good or bad reasons, they should be able to
|
| If you don't want the government on you, if you don't want
| people you know to find you, if you just want to reinvent
| yourself, it doesn't matter why - you should be able to do
| this. It just "feels" like an innate right. Normally I don't
| like to argue using "vibes" as justification, but this to me is
| just part of my value system/morals which is inherently
| arbitrary to begin with
|
| Encroaching on this privacy encroaches on a bunch of other
| rights, like free speech as you've mentioned
|
| The fact that this is the case makes it even clearer to me that
| privacy is a basic fundamental primitive
|
| Would love to hear alternative perspectives and other
| justifications for or against privacy
| olddustytrail wrote:
| That's literally what EU privacy laws are about and guess
| what...
|
| Anti government folk from the USA hated them and decided they
| were government overreach.
| base698 wrote:
| Ah yes, lock you up for Facebook posts UK is the bastion of
| privacy.
| gxs wrote:
| To be fair to OP I don't think the UK is in the EU
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Firstly, the UK is not in the EU. That's what Brexit was.
|
| Secondly, incitement to violence is illegal in most
| countries. If you think it's not in yours, why not try it
| and see where you end up?
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > Secondly, incitement to violence is illegal in most
| countries. If you think it's not in yours, why not try it
| and see where you end up?
|
| By all means, if that's the way you want to represent the
| issue, then there is no discussion to be had.
|
| I will, however, represent it this way:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Ki
| ngd...
|
| I can be compelled in a few situations in this incomplete
| list were of the "deserved" type. But you can't convince
| me on all of them.
| chgs wrote:
| Us techbros like it when Bezos and Zuck and Musk have all
| the information, because you can "vote with your dollar"
| and avoid them.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Please, the EU is trying to ban encryption at this very
| moment, to say the that EU is pro privacy is a bit of a
| joke really.
|
| Privacy from companies maybe, privacy from governments and
| cops, certainly not.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| What did your MEP say when you complained to them about
| it?
| Eavolution wrote:
| Mine said the party was taking it very seriously and it's
| clearly something that is important to me. I trust them
| to do exactly nothing.
| const_cast wrote:
| The EU is both pro-privacy and anti-privacy. In many
| ways, they're ahead of the US - you can opt out of more
| telemetry, more advertising, more tracking. Good. But
| then the encryption stuff - bad.
|
| Informed consent laws - good. Laws about third-party
| tracking - good. So it's some good, some bad.
|
| But, on the topic of encryption, it's not like the US is
| pure here either.
| kergonath wrote:
| > the EU is trying to ban encryption at this very moment,
| to say the that EU is pro privacy is a bit of a joke
| really.
|
| The EU is not a monolith. There are many people pushing
| in many different directions. Sometimes the result is
| good, sometimes less so.
| opello wrote:
| Either so few people appreciate the freedom that privacy
| confers or the perceived conveniences for trading it away are
| too compelling because of just how little society has done to
| protect privacy.
|
| I only imagine it changing after a significant cultural
| change in which the economic value is not held as higher than
| the value of privacy, but would be delighted to be wrong in
| this regard.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The cultural change will only come after society bears a
| significant cost.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I appreciate your emotions, but can you explain how it
| impacts you in practice?
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I don't feel as strongly about privacy because "community" is
| what holds civilisation together.
|
| Its nice to have a little space, and to have your own
| thoughts and opinions, but not at the expense of
| civilisation.
|
| People should not be able to use privacy to evade
| responsibility or debts.
|
| We always need to balance freedoms with responsibility.
|
| Final thought is that this is precisely why government and
| politics is not a joke and needs to be taken seriously. We
| need small transparent governments we can trust and that are
| a held accountable.
|
| If you don't trust your government, you've got bigger
| problems than your privacy.
| raincole wrote:
| > I don't feel as strongly about privacy because
| "community" is what holds civilisation together.
|
| Dude I'm sure most people are okay with their neighbors
| knowing their names and addresses. We're talking about the
| governments and megacorps here. Theses are not
| "communities" in any traditional sense.
|
| > small transparent governments
|
| No developed country has that. Not EU and definitely not
| the US.
|
| > If you don't trust your government
|
| No one should 100% trust their government.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This goes against the very ethos of the early web. We should
| not be normalizing any form of this extreme moral overreach.
| CPLX wrote:
| How did widespread adoption of the libertarian techno-
| utopianism of the early web work out for society as a whole?
| dmix wrote:
| It existed only on the edges, usually in softer pragmatic
| forms, and stopped a lot of bad ideas as a pressure group.
|
| Characterizing the entire development of software and the
| internet in 90s-2000s as based on libertarian techno-
| utopinanism is largely manufactured narrative though. One I
| keep seeing pop up more and more. Largely by people trying
| to push poorly though out authoritarian gov-controlled
| internet by spinning the present internet (and parenting)
| as a product of some ideological radicalism.
| watwut wrote:
| I got us 4chan and 8chan. It got us mass shootings and
| endless "they are just trolling, they are just teenagers,
| they are just ironic" chorus constantly bad faith
| defending the far right.
| mindslight wrote:
| So now that we've arrived at the far right, it's time to
| stop decentralized dissent and prevent the pendulum from
| swinging back? This seems like a terrible idea.
|
| And personally I'd say mass shootings are primarily
| encouraged by corporate mass media (including social
| media) glorifying the events and the shooters, rather
| than anonymous message board speech.
| overfeed wrote:
| "arrived" and "swinging back"? You sound like an
| optimist; the dark-enlightenment Neo-Reactionary folk
| behind this are only just getting started.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Society gave us mass shootings. 4chan and other anonymous
| boards gave us protected speech. We've had mass shootings
| long before 4chan and they didn't start kicking off until
| they reached a critical threshold of interest due to
| social media and the almighty algorithm, not 4chan.
| Conflating these things is either ignorant or dishonest.
| andrepd wrote:
| Lmao, if there's anything that powers up the far-right is
| precisely algorithmic social media, not uncensored old-
| school message boards.
| tremon wrote:
| Are you saying that the early web only existed in the
| USA? I did not witness a growth in mass shootings here in
| Europe from that time. Those things did not happen until
| Web 2.0.
| hooverd wrote:
| Twitter is worse than 4chan now, at least 4chan is
| moderated.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| 4chan is not emblematic of the Internet Wild West. It was
| spawned by users ejected from a traditional forum, a
| scant half-year before Facebook was launched; it was, in
| fact, a sort of mirror to Facebook's response to that old
| internet, moot and Zuck being two sides of the same upper
| middle class white boy script kiddie coin.
|
| And, as with Facebook, the main issue was the ways in
| which each platform perpetuated old social ills, not the
| ways in which they freed users.
|
| Lastly, the tragedy of each is that it would have been
| entirely possible for ethical actors to takeover or fork
| each platform to scrub them of the ills and to promote
| the good. Bluesky is making a try of it vis a vis
| Twitter, and while my hopes aren't high that it will be
| an ultimate solution, I appreciate that there's finally
| been at least an attempt.
| CPLX wrote:
| The "freedom" of the early internet was bullshit, because
| it just meant "freedom to make money" and "freedom from
| having to deal with the consequences of your products on
| regular people."
|
| It most decidedly did not mean "freedom from corporate
| hegemony" which is how we are where we are now, where
| children are matched with pedophile groomers[1] and
| delivered endless advertisements for freelance porn
| practitioners for profit.
|
| This version of freedom isn't a free internet at all.
| That was just a PR pitch. And it wasn't really a great
| idea to begin with, since it ends up leading to where we
| are now.
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-06/in
| stagram...
| convolvatron wrote:
| it depends on which early free internet you're talking
| about. mine strictly forbid commercial usage at all - and
| it was lovely.
| andrepd wrote:
| > which is how we are where we are now, where children
| are matched with pedophile groomers[1] and delivered
| endless advertisements for freelance porn practitioners
| for profit.
|
| Yes, which is why we are _not_ in the early internet
| anymore and fully into surveillance capitalism,
| algorithmic social media.
| CPLX wrote:
| Exactly. And the early internet lead directly here. Which
| is why going back makes about as much sense as picking up
| your baby and dropping it on the floor again.
| raffael_de wrote:
| not at all? because it didn't even get to a point where it
| could have worked out for society as a whole?
| damontal wrote:
| The early web died when everything went behind the walled
| gardens.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Its also to little, to late- the smut is in the LLMs now and
| they can generate whatever the user wants - locally. So good
| luck censoring that.
| api wrote:
| Devils advocate: parents that are too busy or not tech savvy
| are helpless to block content without essentially forbidding
| their kids from using any connected device.
|
| I run a pi-hole that blocks ads and porn, but that's way beyond
| the technical capability of probably 95% of people. There are
| some commercial products but they are expensive and also take
| time and at least a little tech ability to set up.
|
| ... and of course any phone with 5G/LTE gets around this.
| Cellular is impossible to police.
| hansvm wrote:
| That still seems better than the proposed cure. Connected
| devices are overrated.
| api wrote:
| What happens when their friends have them?
|
| It is very hard for parents who aren't tech savvy or are
| busy (single parents or both work) to police this stuff.
|
| I'm playing devils advocate because if we pretend this
| isn't a problem eventually governments will force onerous
| regulation. It is a problem. We need to come up with better
| solutions if we don't want worse ones.
|
| It's devils advocate because I think while kids shouldn't
| be looking at porn the brain rot shit is at least as bad
| and possibly worse. Kids YouTube is a lobotomy.
| salawat wrote:
| Sounds like marketing is the problem. In fact, I'd say
| 90% of the Internet's more problematic aspects disappear
| once you get rid of marketing/monetization. We _had_ a
| good thing. We let mercantilism and surveillance
| capitalism ruin it.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| To some extent, Section 230 is to blame.
| tomrod wrote:
| With all due respect to parents that overscheduled
| themselves: Tough. Raise your kids. Don't try to raise mine.
| chgs wrote:
| > but that's way beyond the technical capability of probably
| 95% of people.
|
| It really isn't, and even if it were an ISP could offer it.
| Indeed I believe most ISPs do (I chose one which is
| unfiltered, I do my own filtering at a router and dns level,
| the biggest threat is DoH)
| arrosenberg wrote:
| It takes less than 5 minutes to set up NextDNS with the same
| functionality and it costs $2 a month for unlimited DNS
| calls. If you download the app it absolutely can police
| cellular.
|
| If these legislators cared about keeping kids safe, they'd be
| focused on getting them off social media, not stopping adults
| from exercising free speech.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Comcast's Xfinity service doesn't let you change DNS in
| their router and blocks queries to other DNS providers if
| you are using their router.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That really should be illegal. It looks like there might
| workarounds, but that defeats the point of being easy to
| use.
|
| None of my non-technical relatives have Comcast, so I'm
| not sure how it would work out. It works fine on ATT,
| Verizon, Cox and Spectrum though.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > parents that are too busy or not tech savvy are helpless to
| block content without essentially forbidding their kids from
| using any connected device
|
| Tough luck, I say. If you're going to bring humans into this
| world, you better do a great job at it and not externalize
| responsibility or create a nuisance for others.
| trhway wrote:
| >Devils advocate: parents that are too busy or not tech savvy
| are helpless to block content without essentially forbidding
| their kids from using any connected device.
|
| May be such inept people who don't care that much about their
| kids as to setup parent control shouldn't have kids in the
| first place? Why we all should take a hit to our
| rights/business/etc. just because of such careless and
| irresponsible parents?
|
| Your kids is your personal responsibility. It the same story
| again and again - why can't these conservative people own
| their personal responsibilities without hoisting its costs
| onto the others?
| lowkey_ wrote:
| Not the parent commenter, but they _just_ said that most
| parents don 't have the technical aptitude to do so.
|
| Implying that they don't care about their kids, or
| shouldn't have kids as a result, is a pretty awful thing to
| say.
| rstat1 wrote:
| In this day and age lack of knowledge is no excuse.
|
| Especially when everyone who would have this particular
| "problem" has access to various search tools and video
| websites that would explain "solutions".
| lowkey_ wrote:
| I feel like, to say that, you haven't tried helping many
| older adults -- or even middle-aged adults -- use
| technology.
|
| If my older family member was scammed by something
| online, and someone said "lack of knowledge is no
| excuse," I think they'd really be missing the mark. Or if
| they shouldn't reproduce because they aren't good with
| technology.
|
| It's a very HN take but it's one that lacks a lot of
| humanity.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Maybe parents shouldn't buy their kids technology they
| don't know how to use?
| rstat1 wrote:
| >> I feel like, to say that, you haven't tried helping
| many older adults -- or even middle-aged adults -- use
| technology.
|
| I have actually. And do so pretty regularly.
|
| But the comment I was replying to was presumably not
| about older adults, and more so about younger parents of
| minor children, whom I wouldn't normally class as "older
| adults", and for the most part I would think know basic
| skills like using a search engine and/or Youtube (or some
| other video sharing app)
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| doesnt realize theyre the problem
| kelnos wrote:
| > _parents that are too busy_
|
| If you are too busy to parent, then you shouldn't be one in
| the first place.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| Sorry you're experiencing a bunch of downvotes over a
| counterpoint from your own experience.
|
| Even though I could predict what side HN would stand on any
| sort of internet freedom post, reading through all the
| reasonable yet greyed-out comments in this thread feels like
| HN's last dying breath as a place for genuine debate.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is a good point of course but that's always the issue,
| no? You may try to hide violence from your children, but if
| they see gang violence around them it doesn't matter. You can
| try to hide sexual content from your kids but if they have
| friends who share the content, hear people talking about it,
| or live in an area where prostitution occurs, you can't stop
| them from being exposed to it.
|
| These were problems from before the age of devices. If
| anything car oriented development has made it easier to
| control your children's experience diet by controlling their
| physical proximity.
|
| Fundamentally I think you just need to trust your kids beyond
| a certain point. Do your best to build constructive
| consumption habits with them (including restricting access to
| devices as needed), help build good moral frameworks, but
| always remember that the world is messy and it's your child's
| job to synthesize their upbringing with their experiences. We
| all did the same while growing up
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Then they shouldn't let their kids have connected devices.
| It's that simple.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Devils advocate: parents that are too busy or not tech
| savvy are helpless to block content without essentially
| forbidding their kids from using any connected device._
|
| I'm going to have to upload 3D models of my face and pictures
| of my ID just to use the internet because... some people
| don't like the idea of other people's kids using the
| internet?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Conservatives are awfully fond of government meddling and
| regulation for being so purportedly anti-government meddling
| and regulation.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I expect a liquor store to check ID, why not a porn store?
| trhway wrote:
| Interesting, why did you give up your right to buy liquor
| anonymously? And you also seem to be willing to give up
| your right to anonymous porn. Why?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _why did you give up your right to buy liquor
| anonymously?_
|
| That's not entirely true - once you look old enough most
| places will stop asking for ID.
|
| As for why: because there is (or at least, was) no other
| system to identify whether someone is underage and, by
| extension, more likely to underestimate the consequences
| of their actions, make worse choices under the effect of
| alcohol, and suffer its effects more strongly. Same
| reason why the legal system makes a difference between
| minors and adults.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| Most of us alive in the US today never had a right to buy
| liquor anonymously, unless you're making a natural rights
| argument independent of contrary constitutional or
| statutory law. The 21st Amendment gives lots of authority
| to states to regulate or prohibit alcohol sales,
| including the right to require ID.
|
| With that said, even now, it's normal that liquor stores
| only look at IDs without transmitting or recording the
| information anywhere (in the absence of fraud concerns),
| so if the purchase itself is made with cash, it has most
| (not quite all) of the same data privacy and security
| consequences as a true anonymous purchase.
|
| This is very different from the online porn age
| verification proposals.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Do booze shops in the US store peoples id's after they've
| flashed them (pun intended)?
| ndriscoll wrote:
| In some states stores are required to scan IDs. I'd be
| surprised if e.g. Kroger weren't storing that
| information. All of these porn laws I've read at least
| ban any storage. As far as I know digital ID standards
| are also at least designed to allow only sharing "over18"
| without other identifying information.
| Eavolution wrote:
| And if I provide it how do they prove they aren't storing
| it other than their word, which is untrustable for many
| reasons?
| moron4hire wrote:
| You don't actually provide it to the porn site.
| Everything goes through a 3rd party escrow. The site
| you're trying to access only gets a message from the
| trusted ID partner that you are indeed the age you say
| you are.
|
| Now, I still hate the idea that _any_ corporation is
| storing my ID, but it 's not every Tom Dicken' Harry porn
| site you might be viewing.
| sitkack wrote:
| Kroger is most definitely storing this information. I
| rarely shop any Kroger store, but when they started doing
| IDs scans, I shop there less and no longer buy anything
| that requires my ID.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| It seems to me that age verification via ID submission
| online and the subsequent storage of IDs are separate
| issues.
| toast0 wrote:
| How could they be separate issues when the submission of
| an ID image obviously enables both the subsequent storage
| of the ID and also the presentment of the ID to others.
|
| We know that very few organizations are capable of
| effectively controlling confidential information that
| they're legally bound to keep confidential. Requiring
| things that are going to lead to large stores of ID
| images is asking for trouble.
|
| When you show your ID in a store, the clerk generally
| doesn't retain a copy of it, and if they do, it's
| apparent because they take the card to scan it...
| regardless, they can't take the scanned copy and present
| it at another store, because the other store will detect
| that it's not an original.
| reliabilityguy wrote:
| Because they are. You do not have to store the ID for
| verification: storage it's just one way to implement such
| a system.
|
| I agree with you that systems that store those IDs are
| ticking bombs.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Booze shops are state licensed and regulated. If they
| mess around with my PII, I have direct recourse options.
| kelnos wrote:
| At this point I think accusing conservatives of hypocrisy is
| blase and yesterday's news.
|
| Of course conservatives are hypocrites. All they care about
| are their end goals, and they will say and do whatever they
| need to say and do in order to achieve them.
|
| One of those goals involves enshrining Christian values into
| law. Christian values themselves are often hypocritical and
| contradictory. And inconsistent: ask 10 Christians to weigh
| in on a thorny moral issue and you'll get 15 different
| answers.
|
| And on top of that, the conservatives in power have a fetish
| for using those power structures to enrich themselves and
| their cronies, under the guise of "small government" and
| "free markets".
|
| I don't think exposing conservative hypocrisy is a winning or
| useful strategy anymore. Conservatives are masters at
| cognitive dissonance, and at hand-waving away inconsistencies
| in their views, or the very real, very negative consequences
| of their policy plans. I'm not sure what the right strategy
| is, though. And perhaps this is why liberals fail to win
| hearts and minds when it matters.
| majormajor wrote:
| And yet...
|
| Whenever anyone has economic woes, there are still plenty
| of people out there who will reflexively say "maybe we
| needs some Republicans in charge for a bit, they're more
| fiscally responsible and will help small businesses" etc
| etc.
|
| And Republicans will happily run on those ideas.
|
| And then not execute them.
|
| So someone needs to be hammering home the fact that it's
| lies - that Republicans will only help the wealthy and
| giant corporations, that they don't care a whit for the
| deficit, that they will spend spend spend on their pet
| issues and crony projects - until it stops being an
| effective campaign soundbite.
| danaris wrote:
| > If these laws move forward (and I don't think they should),
| there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without
| sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving
| actual personal details.
|
| But there won't be.
|
| Because the ultimate purpose of laws like this isn't really to
| prevent minors from accessing porn. Ultimately, it's to
|
| 1) outlaw porn for _everyone_ , because it's "sinful", and
|
| 2) outlaw discussions and depictions of queer--and more
| specifically, nowadays, especially trans--issues, because
| according to them, anything queer is _automatically_
| pornographic, no matter how tame the actual content is.
| macawfish wrote:
| Don't forget about sex education and literature in general
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Knowledge is power.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| You're getting downvoted, likely because the people
| downvoting you dont realize that Project 2025 explicitly
| calls for the complete outlawing of pornography and the
| imprisonment of anyone who produces it. They also frame
| transgender ideology and LGBTQ+ educational materials as
| falling under "pornography", essentially calling for these to
| be banned.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| And when they've banned all of those, they'll be banning
| r/pastorarrested for pointing out what everyone already
| knows about these fine upstanding moralists.
| ai-christianson wrote:
| The pre-red-tape internet was glorious. Only way to get that
| back is to decentralize everything.
| conradev wrote:
| You mean like this?
|
| https://webkit.org/blog/16993/news-from-wwdc25-web-technolog...
|
| It's a W3C spec led by Okta, Apple and Google based on an ISO
| standard and it is being rolled out as we speak.
|
| This part other iOS applications that have
| registered themselves as an Identity Document Provider.
|
| Has some fun history: California went with an independent
| contractor for its mDL implementation, which ultimately
| pressured Apple into integrating open(-ish) standards to
| interoperate.
| al_borland wrote:
| This is interesting, but I'd like to go a step further. I
| watched the first quarter of the video on where they go over
| how it works. The site requests data from your ID and they
| get that data. The site chooses which data it needs and if it
| will store it or it or not. Sites these days have a tendency
| to ask for more than what they need, and to store it for
| profiling purposes. The user can deny the request, but then
| can't use the site. They are then left with a dilemma. Give
| up this personal information or not have access at all?
| Companies are betting on users giving up privacy in exchange
| for access.
|
| What I'd like to see is for the site's request to contain
| their access rules. Must be over 18, must be in country X,
| etc. Then on-device it checks my ID against that rule set,
| and simply returns a pass/fail result from those checks. This
| way the site would know if I'm allowed to be there, but they
| don't get any specific or identifiable information about me.
| Maybe I'm 18, maybe I'm 56... they don't know, they both
| simply send a pass. For a simple age check, a user's exact
| birthday, name, address, etc are irrelevant, but I bet
| companies will get greedy and try to pull it anyway.
|
| I see the monkey paw of the ID spec as leading to more
| companies seeking to get all our data, when they really don't
| need it, and have shown they can't be trusted with it.
|
| I already see this with Apple Pay. When buying a digital
| item, some companies are awesome and simply take the payment
| with no other data. Others pull name, address, email, etc to
| make a payment when none of that is required.
| conradev wrote:
| The spec is being implemented by Apple, who is sensitive to
| privacy issues.
|
| The intent of the ISO spec is to allow you to request fine-
| grained data, like birth year only, but if you read the W3C
| standard, they explicitly call out privacy as a complex
| thing that maybe should be regulated.
|
| The spec spells out the complexity: some ID verification
| processes actually need a lot of info! But some, like an
| alcohol age check, do not. The spec can do both, but it's
| hard to differentiate these technically. The spec does lay
| out what user agents should do to make it clear which
| information is going where.
|
| A bad scenario would be designing an API that is too
| hobbled to replace the invasive "photo of an ID" companies,
| which this spec seeks to do.
|
| I'd prefer an open web standard that can be abused (with
| user consent) to a closed App Store-only API or the status
| quo
| loeg wrote:
| > Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to
| raise their kids.
|
| This is simplistic. I think you'll find parents are not a
| uniform bloc in favor of this kind of overreach.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are
| expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their
| kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID?_
|
| Kind of unfortunate that PICS[1][2] and POWDER[3][4] never
| really took off: it allowed web sites to 'self-label' and then
| browsers (and proxies?) could use the metadata and built-in
| rules/filters to determine if the content should be displayed.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...
|
| [2] https://www.w3.org/PICS/
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R...
|
| [4] https://www.w3.org/2007/powder/
| Bender wrote:
| PICS and ICRA were not adopted by many due to complexity. RTA
| [1][2] is a more generic header that can be used on any adult
| site or site that allows user contributed content and is
| easier to implement. There needs to be a law that requires
| clients to look for this header if parental controls are
| enabled. Not perfect, nothing is. Teens will easily get
| around it but _most_ small children will not which _should_
| be the spirit of the ID verification movement. It 's better
| than what we have today. The centralized ID verification
| sites will push many small sites to Tor and bigger sites to
| island nations _and tax evasion_ in my opinion. More browsers
| are natively supporting .onion domains.
|
| Congress critters should be opposed to the centralized ID
| verification systems as their browsing habbits will be
| exposed to the world when those sites _ooopsie dooopsie
| "leak"_ the data or just openly sell it or an employee turns
| that data into a summarized online spreadsheet of who is into
| what. The kickbacks and lobbying they may be potentially
| receiving will not be worth it.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
|
| [2] - https://www.shodan.io/search?query=RTA-5042-1996-1400-1
| 577-R... [dont follow the links, NSFW]
| aaaja wrote:
| This is a barrier put in place so that children are less likely
| to casually access these sites while they're browsing around.
|
| As an adult, no-one is forcing you to view pornographic
| websites. If you don't want to provide your ID as per these
| laws, simply refrain from viewing. It really is that
| straightforward a choice.
| const_cast wrote:
| Right, so you're admitting what we already know to be true:
| it's censorship.
|
| Now, I can get behind _some_ censorship if it 's for very
| good reasons. As soon as it's for moralistic reasons, you've
| lost me. This is a morality law. Morality laws are bad,
| period. We need real, concrete reasons for blocking content
| and enforcing censorship - not morality.
|
| Why not? Because morals change from person to person and
| throughout history. What an evangelical thinks is moral is
| different from what I think is moral.
|
| If the internet existed during times of slavery, would they
| have censored websites addressing freedom because it is
| "immoral"? In my mind, yes. That's a problem with the entire
| thought process. So, we should throw the thought process out.
|
| I don't know what the future holds in 10 years, 20 years, 30.
| I don't want to be bound to laws that rely solely on
| morality. That's just asking for trouble.
|
| I mean, even just the word "pornography" is a moral footgun.
| Who defines that? Because a large portion of the US believes
| anything containing homosexuals is _automatically_
| pornographic, regardless of the material.
| aaaja wrote:
| Proving one's age is required for many other activities
| that are considered unsuitable for children, such as
| purchasing alcohol and drugs, and watching age-restricted
| films in the cinema.
|
| Of course this means that any adult, when challenged, who
| refuses to show ID as proof of age, will be denied service.
| But again that refusal is their choice. They voluntarily
| refrained from complying with the access requirements.
|
| How is this substantially different to an adult refusing to
| show ID to access an age-restricted website?
| const_cast wrote:
| The internet is already blocked by age. In order to order
| internet service, you must be an adult, and you must
| prove it by showing papers, such as residence and pay
| stubs.
|
| Once the service or good is sold, all bets are off. The
| clerk at the corner store might ask for your ID to buy
| alcohol, yes. But they do not follow you home to ensure
| you don't give wine to your kid.
|
| And, if they did, would you be comfortable with that? I
| think no. Why not? Privacy. I don't want a random clerk
| watching me every time I decide to drink or smoke. It's a
| violation of my privacy.
|
| So, privacy - there's your answer, that's the difference.
| aaaja wrote:
| The internet is not blocked by age. Any child with a
| laptop or phone, or any other device that can connect to
| a wifi hotspot, can access it.
|
| Do you refuse to watch age-restricted films in the cinema
| because the owner of the cinema might have a record of
| what you've watched? Age-restricted websites are no
| different. You can comply with the access requirement, or
| refrain from using the service. It's your freedom of
| choice.
|
| No-one is forcing you to watch 18-rated films at the
| cinema, or purchase alcohol or drugs, or view
| pornographic material online. If you don't like the
| requirement to prove your age by presenting some form of
| ID, then all you need to do is voluntarily refrain from
| these and any other age-restricted activities.
| bmandale wrote:
| Public wifi near universally implements porn blocks in
| the first place. I can't imagine there would be much
| chagrin about promoting that into a law.
|
| > Do you refuse to watch age-restricted films in the
| cinema because the owner of the cinema might have a
| record of what you've watched?
|
| I can't imagine that there aren't many people who refrain
| from watching all sorts of content in public out of
| privacy concerns.
|
| >If you don't like the requirement to prove your age by
| presenting some form of ID, then all you need to do is
| voluntarily refrain from these and any other age-
| restricted activities.
|
| I certainly don't, and I would definitely oppose this
| being made into law.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Many public WiFi hotspots have content filters. Kids are
| not going to be seeing porn at the library.
|
| The issue here is there's a difference between a
| mainstream service, like a cinema, and a tiny author
| website which probably gets a few hundred hits a months
| at most.
|
| And the ultimate ideological aim is to take all erotica
| offline. Especially any kind of queer erotica.
|
| This is using ID issues for ideological censorship, not
| trying to set up an ID system to _streamline access_ to
| adult material by adult consumers.
| const_cast wrote:
| There are infinite levels of privacy.
|
| > Do you refuse to watch age-restricted films in the
| cinema because the owner of the cinema might have a
| record of what you've watched?
|
| For me, no. For others, yes.
|
| But this is a different degree of privacy to what we're
| talking about. It's not the same, and you cannot make the
| jump for free.
|
| What I mean is, just because I am okay with this degree
| of privacy violation, does not mean I consent to all
| privacy violations which may ever exist. Again, you might
| be fine with an R-rated movie - but you, yourself, would
| not be fine with a store clerk living at your house to
| ensure you don't give kids alcohol. So you, yourself,
| understand and live by the principle.
|
| > Any child with a laptop or phone, or any other device
| that can connect to a wifi hotspot, can access it.
|
| Similarly, any child living in my house can access my
| scotch.
|
| It is up to me, the person who purchased the good or
| service, to ensure that doesn't happen. It is not up to a
| third-party like the store clerk. If I am a business, it
| is then up to me that the internet I provide is
| adequately censored. Which is what happens in practice.
| Eavolution wrote:
| I am never providing my ID to anyone who can store it
| indefinitely. I am an adult and have no problem showing it in a
| shop if required as it isn't stored. Unless it can be proven it
| wont be stored (i.e. the bytes are never sent from my laptop) I
| will not provide it.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Your ID is effectively stored by the issuer indefinitely.
| What's the difference between one and two entities? What's
| the difference between two and a hundred?
| al_borland wrote:
| The more people you give your personal information to, the
| less personal it becomes.
|
| The servers storing this information have been hacked in
| the past and it will happen again in the future. The fewer
| places your ID lives, the lower the risk of it leaking.
|
| Even if you don't view the data as sensitive, it still
| associates a person with a website. Depending on the site,
| that can have negative ramifications in a person's life.
| This is especially true when certain websites get
| associated with various political leaning and when the data
| leaks, the people who happened to be registered (for
| whatever their reason) get attacked.
| andrepd wrote:
| What's the difference between a state agency issuing a
| document, and sending that document to 100 random websites.
| This is your question, correct?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The slippery slope from here to banning under 18s looking at
| websites discussing suicidal thoughts, transgender issues,
| homosexually and onto anything some group of middle age mothers
| decide isn't appropriate seems dangerously anti-fallacitical.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The hilarious part is this only regulates American speakers.
| If you want to sell Americans porn and ignore the age gate,
| publish from abroad.
| windowshopping wrote:
| Anti-fallacitical?
| cmilton wrote:
| While I completely understand the slippery slope concept, we
| ban all kinds of things for under 18s based on morals. Why
| couldn't these be any different? How else does a society
| decide as a whole what they are for or against. Obviously,
| there should be limits.
| afavour wrote:
| The question is always "whose morals". I think society as a
| whole is in agreement that minors are better off without
| access to pornography, for example. But the arrangement OP
| is outlining is one where a minority are able to force
| their morality on a broader population that doesn't agree
| with it.
| lelanthran wrote:
| You might be wrong there. While the majority does not
| oppose homosexual relationships they are against
| affirmative transgender treatments for minors.
| noosphr wrote:
| If you need an id to buy porn irl why wouldn't you need one to
| buy it online?
| breadwinner wrote:
| Because 'online' is the entire planet, including sellers in
| foreign countries. Would you like to have "digital borders"
| between countries, where data has to show some sort of
| passport to cross the border?
| noosphr wrote:
| Again, if I want to import pron from Japan I need to not
| only prove I'm 18 to the border censors but make sure the
| pron is legal locally.
|
| Plenty of people have been arrested for importing things
| legal in Japan that are illegal in the West.
|
| Plenty of countries have laws on the books that make it a
| felony to even look at what's on the average Japanese store
| bookshelf while you're in Japan.
|
| Why should the laws be different just because you're moving
| electrons instead of atoms?
| 38 wrote:
| VPN.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID?
|
| They won't have to, most websites will use 3rd party age
| verification. This is basically what Doordash and Uber Eats use
| to verify your age before delivering alcohol or THC to your
| apartment.
|
| Rife for abuse? Absolutely. Will these databases get leaked and
| increase the chances of your identity getting stolen? Yes. But
| isn't a small increase to an already-existing problem.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Thinking about client vs server, wouldn't it be even less wide-
| ranging, less costly to enforce, and more appropriately
| targeted if such mandates are one-time and on the client side -
| only on device manufacturers and OEM-shipped OS? To default new
| mass market devices to parental controls on, until unlocked by
| an adult at point-of-sale or afterwards through a form of
| validation? The KYC of who unlocked it for whom could be
| anonymized or the PII-proving side of the log if it needs
| keeping could be on-device only (high bar for criminal
| investigations). There should be a clear exemption threshold
| for low volume indie products, build your own PC, and open
| source self-install like Linux - since the purpose is to
| protect ignorant consumers, not technical DIY.
| ChainnChompp wrote:
| Hopefully someone kept a snapshot of the country's configs before
| this year began. I feel like we're going to need it. This is
| ludicrous - as so much is lately.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the S3 bucket we use to host the backups is
| gone... the compliance department complained about it, but now
| they're gone, too...
| gs17 wrote:
| > The public library in rural Donnelly, Idaho, at only 1,024
| square feet, had no practical way to create an enforceable
| "adults only" section and no budget to defend against lawsuits.
| Therefore, to comply with the law, they decided to make the
| entire library for adults only. The library has banned minors
| from entering the library (even to use the bathroom) unless they
| are accompanied by an adult, or holding a waiver from their
| parents.
|
| This is absurd. It does look like they're suing, with help from a
| lot of publishers, at least.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I spent a lot of time after school in the library to avoid my
| abusive cult guardians at home. If this avenue hadn't been
| available to me in my small town, I'd likely have committed
| suicide. But, I'm an atheist, so me committing suicide would
| probably be seen as a win for these evangelical freaks.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| Yeah, me too. It's very chilling to see the resurgence of a
| very broad conception of parental rights, which can in some
| cases permit the wholesale physical, emotional, and sexual
| abuse of children without recourse.
|
| It's hard to talk about it without being accused of
| hyperbole, but some of these proposed laws come very close to
| making children the property of their parents. As someone who
| grew up in an abusive household, that makes me _exceedingly_
| uncomfortable.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I've talked to enough people who explicitly believe that
| children _are_ chattel (sometimes in the same breath as
| complaining about abuse they suffered from their own
| parents) to know this isn 't hyperbole.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I shared this experience before on a recent thread about
| the role librarians play in counterculture and a user made
| a throwaway account in order to tell me to kill myself all
| sorts of creative ways and that he's glad I was abused,
| etc. etc.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| The Republican party has worked to kill public libraries and
| public education for years, so this fits right in line.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _In fact, under the laws that the Supreme Court just upheld,
| prosecutors in Tennessee and South Dakota can even reach across
| state lines and prosecute writers on FELONY charges for a single
| paragraph of sexually-explicit writing on my site that they think
| "harmed" kids in their states, facing up to FIFTEEN years in
| prison, for failing to implement ID-checks on my dinky little
| free WordPress site._
|
| > _It 's unlikely these interstate prosecutions would happen... _
|
| It might wind up being uncommon, but definitely not unlikely -
| it's basically assured that it will happen eventually, especially
| if the judge finds the text in question particularly or
| personally offensive.
|
| I guess now is a great time to start a KYC company.
| bravoetch wrote:
| Or now is a good time to build privacy tools into everything.
| root_axis wrote:
| Unfortunately, this is the law we're talking about. Privacy
| tools don't do much to mitigate the hardships of life as a
| fugitive.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Judges are not the people that prosecute crimes
| root_axis wrote:
| True, but it's a given that prosecutors will do it since
| that's their job.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Regressive states are already trying to prosecute across state
| lines for medical care, so it's pretty likely they'll continue
| with speech.
| giingyui wrote:
| Yep, medical care.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| If an state AG tries to prosecute an entity that has no ties to
| the state other than content being passively accessible, that's
| probably another supreme court case if it doesn't get
| immediately decided in favor of the defendant in the lower
| courts. You open a big can of worms if entities are required to
| proactively comply with regulations in states they have zero
| presence in.
|
| If Texas wants to block content from entities that have nothing
| to do with Texas, they can build their own great firewall.
| ronsor wrote:
| Isn't this covered by the "full faith and credit" clause? [0]
|
| [0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S1-1
| /AL...
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Technically anything is possible with the Calvinball
| Supreme Court, but states can choose not to extradite their
| citizens. E.g. NY has a shield law for abortion doctors.
|
| https://ag.ny.gov/resources/organizations/police-
| departments...
| kelnos wrote:
| This feels helpful, but puts a big burden on the person
| targeted. I live in California; let's say I run afoul of
| this Tennessee law and am criminally prosecuted.
|
| California decides this is bullshit and won't extradite
| me to Tennessee. Great. The article mentions that 20-odd
| states are implementing similar laws (though most offer
| only civil penalties, not criminal). Let's say I want to
| visit friends in New York. I get on a plane, and the
| plane flies over one of those other states with shitty
| laws. They've decided to help Tennessee with their
| shitty-law enforcement, see that my name is on a
| passenger list of a flight crossing that state's
| airspace, and they require my plane divert to a local
| airport so they can arrest me.
|
| Ok, maybe states can't do that? But I still have to be
| careful how I fly; I have to only take direct flights, or
| be very careful as to which connecting airports I allow
| in my itineraries. I have to hope that all my flights go
| smoothly, and that my flights never have issues that
| require them to divert to an airport in a state with
| shitty laws.
|
| This still sucks for people who don't have to live in
| states with these garbage laws.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > You open a big can of worms if entities are required to
| proactively comply with regulations in states they have zero
| presence in.
|
| It's true, it would cause a great deal of chaos if suddenly
| every person and business had to comply with fifty-plus
| different and sometimes contradictory state laws.
|
| But it seems like that's where we're headed?
| kfajdsl wrote:
| As far as I understand it (IANAL), this ruling decides that
| the speech restrictions imposed by the Texas ID
| verification law are compliant with the 1st amendment. It
| didn't touch on whether or not Texas can enforce its laws
| on entities that don't do business in Texas.
| root_axis wrote:
| IANAL, but it seems like things are already moving in this
| direction. For example, FL has a similar state law regarding
| pornography, and the response from many porn sites has been
| to comply or block FL IPs rather than fight it up to the
| supreme court. I guess someone will do it eventually, but I
| suspect there is an assumption that they'd be wasting their
| time and money to do so.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| Yeah I don't think a business is going to try to force the
| issue when a geoblock is simple to implement. If it
| happens, it's probably going to be some kind of advocacy
| group pushing it.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I urge all American software engineers not just to completely
| ignore these unconstitutional laws, but to actively create,
| distribute and maintain technologies which defend Americans'
| rights to publish obscene filth without government oversight.
| 65 wrote:
| Tor might be wildly popular in a few years.
| chgs wrote:
| If the Supreme Court agrees they are constitutional then they
| clearly are constitutional, unless you think the constitution
| doesn't apply
| tyre wrote:
| The Supreme Court considered internment camps and segregation
| constitutional, until it didn't.
|
| There are also people who disagree with the Supreme Court's
| interpretations. Including members of the Supreme Court! Both
| current (dissents) and not (overturning past rulings.)
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Let's not pretend that the current federal government isn't
| completely compromised.
| tiahura wrote:
| Two hundred and fifty years of jurisprudence would suggest
| there has never been a right to obscenity.
| perihelions wrote:
| There was a NYT article a couple weeks ago about Chinese morality
| police doing mass arrests of erotica authors,
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/world/asia/china-boys-lov... (
| _" Chinese Police Detain Dozens of Writers Over Gay Erotic Online
| Novels"_) [note article contains large images of erotica novel
| covers]
|
| But you'd *expect* that of the PRC; the US, wow, has it ever
| fallen fast and fallen hard.
| xp84 wrote:
| So, while I agree that this feels foreign and wrong to me as
| someone who has experienced "The Internet" for so long, I can't
| help but wonder if we can separate that from how the offline
| world works.
|
| I'm asking this in good faith.
|
| Given that:
|
| 1. The Internet is not an optional subscription service today the
| way it was in 1995. Every kid and adult has 1,000 opportunities
| to get online including on the multiple devices every one of
| their peers owns, which a single set of parents has no control
| over. So "Just keep them off the Internet/control their devices"
| seems like a silly "Just" instruction.
|
| 2. The Internet is nearly infinite. The author of this editorial
| says "then install a content blocker on your kids' devices and
| add my site to it". This is a silly argument since the whole
| point is that no one has ever heard of him/her and it's obviously
| impossible for a filter (let's just assume filters can't be
| bypassed) can "just" enumerate every inappropriate site even if
| it employed a full-time staff who did nothing but add new sites
| to the list all day long.
|
| So given all of that, how do we justify how the Internet must
| operate on different rules than the offline world does? One can't
| open a "Free adult library" downtown and allow any child to
| wander in and check out books showing super explicit porn. I'd
| have to check IDs and do my best to keep kids out. It also seems
| like it would be gross to do so. If you agree with that, why
| _should_ the Internet operate on different rules?
|
| I'd also like to separate the logistics from the morality here.
| If you believe it's hard to do it without satisfying privacy
| concerns, totally true! But then the focus should be on finding a
| good privacy-respecting solution, not just arguing for the status
| quo.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _allow any child to wander in and check out books showing
| super explicit porn_
|
| As far as I'm aware, online sites generally don't let children
| _wander in_ either. One of the reasons being they will make a
| mess of the cabling.
|
| That's obviously in jest, but the point is that physical
| presence is the entire crux here. When entering a physical
| space, you do so with a physical body that society has demanded
| be able to be identified. And age can often be determined
| without even fully verifying identification, which is why our
| society has been so accepting of age checks.
|
| The Internet has flourished precisely because of the foundation
| where one does not need to be identified. In fact one does not
| even need to be human, nor accessing a digital service the way
| the publisher intends. Separation of concerns. This has worked
| for what, 30 years at this point? An entire generation? If
| parents are still buying their kids hardcore pornography
| terminals these days, they've got no one to blame but
| themselves. And no, I do not care that "everybody else is doing
| it".
|
| Ultimately, the "logistics" _cannot_ be separated from the
| "morality" - it is a different type of space, and the moral
| thing to do is engage with it as it is, instead of demanding
| centralizing authoritarian changes.
|
| These demands are from a narrow contingent of people that could
| straightforwardly build their own desired environment (the
| content blocking you've referenced as a straw man, or more
| accurately kid-friendly content curation), but yet have not
| done so. Because ultimately these types of calls are never
| actually about "the kids" but rather a general desire to insert
| themselves as morality police into _everyone 's_ business.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The fundamental problem--and it's a big one--is that in the
| physical world, age verification does not result in a
| centralized log of when and where I was, and what I did. If I
| buy cigarettes I show my paper id to some dude and then buy
| smokes. It's transient with no record (except the fallible
| memory of the bloke doing the ID check).
|
| This is not true for the proposed age verification schemes for
| the internet and that is a big problem. Unless this is solved,
| these schemes deserve every level of resistance we can muster.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If we cannot handle age verification then WTF are we doing as
| an industry? Seriously? Everyone else is able to figure it
| out! Why are all the genius innovators so powerless to build
| a working system? They're either stupid or greedy IMO.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Age verification is easy. Age verification that leaves no
| record, is anonymous, and not circumvent-able is difficult.
| In the physical world it relies on the fallibility of human
| memory. No such luck with replicated databases.
| chgs wrote:
| Site generates random key
|
| Key and verification passed to verifier
|
| Verified list is published
|
| Site pulls list and checks its number has been verified
|
| Site doesn't know who it is, and verifier doesn't know
| which site was verified against
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| How do you prove that the generated key by the site is
| actually randomly generated? I certainly don't trust a
| random porn site to do this right.
|
| If the verified list is tied against identity, there is
| only a simple law change required to de-anonymize
| everything.
| chgs wrote:
| Doesn't really matter surely, you only need to trust the
| identity provider not to leak your identity and your porn
| provider not to have a key that your identity provider
| can link to.
| baq wrote:
| An id card is a bearer token.
|
| You can get an anonymous, cryptographically signed,
| certified legal bearer token confirming your age _only_ ,
| or identity or whatever by a centralized service, be it
| government or high trust private organizations who need
| to verify your identity anyway like banks. With some
| smarts you can probably make such a token yourself so the
| root bearer token issuer doesn't have the one you use to
| browse pornhub.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Which inevitably can be deanonymized after a simple law
| change, mandating the required data to be reported.
| danaris wrote:
| ...Who is accurately and reliably doing age verification
| online?
|
| How can you guarantee that the credential you're getting
| belongs to the actual person on the other side of the
| screen?
| chgs wrote:
| We can't do it because our priority as an industry is to
| get data to monetise. Anonymity is a bug, not a feature.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's not even universally true, though. I've been to bars
| where they scan the barcode on my drivers' license. I assume
| that's more convenient than reading the data off it, so maybe
| they're just doing it for convenience and aren't storing the
| data anywhere, but who knows, maybe they are. Maybe there's a
| database somewhere with a list of name, date, time, location
| tuples for some of my bar visits from years ago. Creepy.
| perth wrote:
| Nitpick: currently in the US, most public libraries do not
| regulate anyone, of any age, from reading "adult" books.
| watwut wrote:
| They wont allow minors to take out porn. Simply, they wont
| and it would be illegal for them.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| What public libraries have porn?
|
| Or is it the pearl clutching where a novel with a same-sex
| kiss is smut? What about all of the graphic acts that
| happen in the Bible?
| lg wrote:
| 10 year old me definitely checked out the Clan of the
| Cavebear books and similar from my local library, no one
| cared.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| I think the point they were making is that a child can walk
| into a library, pick up any book, and open it. All without
| any adults being in the loop. They can do that today.
| kelnos wrote:
| Flip it on its head.
|
| An age verification requirement might stop your 12-year-old
| from accessing a porn site headquartered or hosted in the US,
| but it will do nothing to keep your kid from finding porn on
| any of the thousands (tens of thousands? more?) of websites
| hosted in various other countries who don't care about this
| sort of thing.
|
| These sites are (or will be, if US-based sites become
| inaccessible) just as easy to find, and just as hard to block
| with normal parental-controls style content blocking.
|
| Requiring age verification in the US doesn't solve the problem.
| It just stifles free speech and turns us even more into a
| Christian nanny-state. The people pushing these laws don't care
| about children, in reality. They care about banning pornography
| in the US, and this is one step on that road.
|
| > _If you believe it 's hard to do it without satisfying
| privacy concerns, totally true!_
|
| That's not the issue. The issue is that it's _impossible_ to
| achieve the stated goal (making it impossible or even hard for
| children to access adult content), period. Whether or not the
| age-verification is done in a privacy-preserving manner is
| irrelevant.
|
| There are two ways to "solve" this problem. One is better
| parental controls, but this will always be a cat-and-mouse
| game, and will never be perfect. The other is to accept that
| your kids will sometimes see things that you don't want them to
| see. That's how the world has always worked, and will continue
| to always work. Be there for them to provide context and
| support when they run across these things by accident and are
| confused or upset, and punish when they seek it out against the
| rules and boundaries you've set for them. You know... be a
| parent, and _parent_ them.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Are they actually just as hard to block though? e.g. I don't
| see much reason to allow traffic to any Russian or Chinese
| IPs for any reason from my network. To be honest a default
| blacklist to any non-American IP seems like it'd not cause
| much trouble for my family, and then if there were some
| educational or FOSS or whatever sites in Europe, those could
| be whitelisted on a case by case basis.
|
| Similarly the only expected VPN traffic in my network would
| be inbound to my wire guard server/router. Everything else
| can be banned by default.
| Asooka wrote:
| I would say the best option, if there absolutely must be age
| verification etc., would be to have a registry of sites that
| comply with all regulations and by default devices shouldn't
| access sites off that list. Basically a giant allolist for
| verified good sites. The internet is already effectively shrunk
| to less than a dozen sites for regular users, so this won't
| impact them, and the rest of us can have real free speech and
| unregulated internet back by switching DNS servers or some
| similar trivial change.
|
| Or we move everything not meant for the sanitised internet to
| TOR hidden services.
| caim wrote:
| I really didn't expect that from the land of freedom. /s
| everdrive wrote:
| Others have said this, I'm sure, but this will move past porn
| _quickly_. Once there is agreed-up age verification for
| pornography, much of the professional internet will require
| identity verification to do _anything_. This is one of the bigger
| nails in the coffin for the free internet, and this true whether
| or not you're happy with all the pornography out there.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I don't agree, at least as far as legal obligation goes. The
| average voter is far more worried about porn and other explicit
| content and not so much about anything else.
| __loam wrote:
| This doesn't really track with widespread and normalized use
| of pornographic materials, including written descriptions, by
| most adults in this country. There's a pretty wide gulf
| between "I don't think kids should be able to access this
| stuff" and "I think we need to supercharge the surveillance
| state and destroy the first amendment"
| nikanj wrote:
| And honestly, with the advent of AI spam everywhere, I'd be
| quite happy to visit a version of the internet where everyone
| is a certified real person
| baq wrote:
| No idea why you're getting downvoted when there's a slow but
| unstoppable migration of everything into discord or other
| walled, somewhat LLM-proof gardens.
| tines wrote:
| Walled gardens are only LLM-proof until some AI company
| makes an offer for the data.
| nikanj wrote:
| I don't care about that. I care about the number of DMs I
| get from "superhorni420" offering me her nudes
|
| I don't really see a future where Discord would let an AI
| company post the kind of 24/7 porn+crypto+scams you get
| in your email spam folder
| Aerroon wrote:
| But that's already been happening in discord for years.
| layer8 wrote:
| The parent's point is that identity verification would
| stop that.
| 38 wrote:
| be careful what you ask for.
| baq wrote:
| I'd rather have this regulated properly before cloudflare
| becomes the defacto standard of id checks.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Nothing is going to be "regulated properly" for at least the
| next 3.5 years, and we'll all be dealing with backwards
| decline for decades after. That's best case, but i'm guessing
| It'll be even worse than the "radicals" are shouting about.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Age verification seems like a subset of human verification so
| if it gets rid of both bots and captchas then why not?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Pretty sure you can guess a few.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Guess a few what?
| layer8 wrote:
| Reasons why not.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| This doesn't sound so bad. I would much prefer to have
| discussions about politics, technology, or religion safe in the
| knowledge that I am not inadvertently communicating with a
| minor.
| HaZeust wrote:
| I had very passionate talks online about all 3 categories
| before I turned 18, and I got a lot of feedback, from older
| folk I didn't previously know, that I shaped opinions and
| formed new perspectives - and a lot of the talks sure as shit
| did the same for me. I cannot say I would have nearly the
| same current passion that I do for technology, aspects of
| politics, and philosophy (including that of religion) without
| such exposures during my adolescent years, and I'm sure you'd
| be hard-pressed to find others young enough that wouldn't say
| the same - provided they have an adequate baseline of
| introspection.
|
| On that note, out of all the examples you could have given
| for discussion categories that are unbecoming to have with
| minors, you chose 3 relatively benign ones, lol.
| layer8 wrote:
| Parent said identity verification, not age verification.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| As an outsider seeing the US destroy everything people associate
| with America in a couple months is sort of morbidly funny...
| Sharlin wrote:
| Most people's associations with the US were fanciful and
| unrealistic to begin with. It's just that now the reality has
| diverged so far from their mental images that they're forced to
| acknowledge the disparity.
| chgs wrote:
| When it comes to nudity and sex America has always been
| puritanical.
|
| Blood and guns, sure. Freedumb
| kelnos wrote:
| While we do produce a lot of porn, remember that the pre-US
| colonies were founded by conservative religious people who were
| too conservative even for Europe at the time.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Remember personals and missed connections on Craigslist? Remember
| when they took those down, and why?
|
| This goes back a long ways.
| bickfordb wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/business/craigslist-perso...
| _bent wrote:
| We've had kids accessing an Internet without any working age
| barriers for over 30 years now.
|
| There have been problems, be that grooming, Facebook parties and
| maybe addiction to TikTok.
|
| But being able to access adult content be that sexual or violent
| in nature doesn't really seem to have had much negative
| consequences.
|
| Sure I wouldn't want my 10 year old to see 2 girls 1 cup - but I
| reckon it wouldn't be the end of the world if he did.
|
| It's good that we have content recommendations. But we shouldn't
| try to actually enforce them.
|
| Again: with all the options kids have had for accessing porn
| online in the last couple of decades, if it was actually THAT
| bad, we'd be having an epidemic. Yet we don't. The kids are
| alright
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Content restrictions should just be an option with the ISP: to
| make the entire modem/phone disable adult content and/or
| require age verification. This, I would disable (presuming `on`
| by default).
|
| >2 girls 1 cup
|
| I still remember showing that to curious ladies in grad school
| (who'd heard about it); some of my favorite reaction footage.
|
| >10 years old
|
| My generation's equivalent was lemonparty.com
|
| =>O<=
| tolerance wrote:
| > Sure I wouldn't want my 10 year old to see 2 girls 1 cup -
| but I reckon it wouldn't be the end of the world if he did.
|
| This implies is level of nonchalance toward your child seeing
| two women have sex and eat turds that demands elaboration.
| const_cast wrote:
| It doesn't - rather, it attacks the preposition at it's
| source. Pornography is bad, supposedly, but is it actually?
| It seems to me we all moved on without actually answering
| that question.
|
| We know it's bad for moral reasons, but moral reasons are
| stupid and I don't trust them. But is it actually bad - like
| in the real world, with tangible effects, not made-up ones? I
| don't know, and it looks like you don't know, and OP doesn't
| know, and the people who are pushing this age verification
| don't know either.
|
| Sure, two girls one cup is disgusting. It's vile. It's
| immoral. But is it harmful? That's a different question.
|
| That's a huge problem. You see, we're attempting to solve a
| problem which we haven't proved even exists.
| tolerance wrote:
| I have a feeling that this is going to turn into one of
| those exchanges where we capoeira around theory and
| definitions and what "real" is and what "real" isn't in a
| way I have to think that either you've lived a sheltered
| life, or are in denial or have some kind of resentment
| toward the disgusting, vile and immoral things that you've
| witnessed that were "harmful" to you (I'm not a therapist).
|
| Moral reasons are stupid and you don't trust them.
|
| Go find a ten-year-old and show them the video yourself.
| Then see if they feel up to letting you stick around them
| long enough for you to figure out whether there were any
| real-world, tangible effects.
| const_cast wrote:
| What I mean by "real" is real-world, tangible.
|
| If I drive a car without a seatbelt, that has real-world
| effects. I can get ejected and die, as well as hurting
| other people.
|
| But pornography doesn't split my skull. It doesn't crush
| my fingers. It doesn't make me poorer. It doesn't make me
| sicker. It doesn't hurt me physically, or financially, or
| even socially.
| tolerance wrote:
| I know, or at least I figured that's what you meant.
|
| I'm not a proponent of the discipline per say, and maybe
| because of this, my impression that the entire field of
| psychology is meant to partially address the real-word,
| tangible effects of things that do not cause apparent
| physical harm is naive.
|
| If I'm accustomed to women getting indiscriminately
| reamed and pinned and prodded at my own discretion--even
| casually--I am at a detriment.
|
| I'm going to leave out a more accessible or agreeable
| example because I want to give you the benefit of the
| doubt that you can come up one on your own.
|
| I don't mean to be condescending, but I want to assume
| that you're arguing in good faith.
|
| Have you, or any one who you know, seen something
| disgusting, vile or immoral that didn't cause physical
| harm but had a negative consequence on how you feel about
| yourself or the world around you?
|
| Why are we quick to champion the value of the "good"
| things that don't offer any material benefit (i.e.,
| physically, financially, socially) but criticizing the
| "bad" requires graphs and groups and variables and peer
| reviews?
|
| I know, and I figure that you know too. "Good" and "bad"
| exist in quotations marks and only count among the people
| who don't need them to use them with each other.
| const_cast wrote:
| > Why are we quick to champion the value of the "good"
| things that don't offer any material benefit (i.e.,
| physically, financially, socially) but criticizing the
| "bad" requires graphs and groups and variables and peer
| reviews?
|
| To answer this, it's because of how modern societies view
| rights. Namely, you can do whatever you want, until we
| can prove it's to a detriment to other people. Before
| doing something, we need not prove it is good.
|
| On an individual level, it is a very good idea to have
| some guarantee something is good before we do it. But on
| a societal level, we don't do this, and for good reason.
| Before we censor or restrict, we must assure we have good
| reasons for doing so.
|
| > If I'm accustomed to women getting indiscriminately
| reamed and pinned and prodded at my own discretion--even
| casually--I am at a detriment.
|
| I might agree, but sexuality and sex is very complex.
|
| I can argue that it's not that simple, and sex exists
| beyond the bounds of what you do - it's part of who you
| are, and not much in your control.
|
| For example, I am a homosexual, I'm gay. Naturally my sex
| involves anal intercourse with other men. To many, this
| is disgusting. Gross, unsanitary, distasteful.
|
| My life would certainly be easier if I did not have this
| affliction, but simultaneously I cannot control it. I've
| tried, as has every gay man or boy at some point in their
| lives. And, I do not know what has caused it. If I never
| viewed pornography, ever, I am 100% confident I would
| still be gay.
|
| I do not know how it works for heterosexuals, but I
| imagine, to some degree, their sexual proclivities are,
| too, not under their control. I don't think removing
| pornography would remove those sexual proclivities.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Getting shot at school is far worse than seeing a vagina,
| but according to the people doing the censoring a movie
| featuring a vagina is a bigger problem than a violent
| random death.
|
| As moral positions go, it's actually quite eccentric.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Many of these things can't be "unseen," and I wish I
| hadn't.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| I saw that when I was little and it was just gross; I'm fine
| lol. My generation was the one watching cartel executions at
| that same time and that's probably worse.
| tolerance wrote:
| Who is your generation and how do you think they turned
| out.
|
| No, save it (don't save it, this is rhetorical), because
| apparently every generation is screwed up in their own way
| that begets the ills of the next.
|
| And if we happen to be cohorts (which I suspect we may be),
| then I think we made out as worse as any.
|
| And is it wrong to assume that there isn't any difference
| between either kinds of footage? That one goads the other
| in either direction?
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Anything you experience may push you in a direction with
| some magnitude, but we tend to overestimate the magnitude
| and mispredict the direction because we're worried about
| the wellbeing of kids. Think "violent video games create
| school schootings." In reality, kids have to deal with a
| lot of real things in life that are hard, an abusive
| parent or bullies at school, but those realities are
| harder to deal with so we distract ourselves worrying
| about violent video games. At the end of the day, it's a
| recording on a screen, which is very different from a
| traumatic reality because you can just turn it off.
| tolerance wrote:
| I'll offer the following speculation:
|
| Virtual reality simulates physical reality.
|
| In some cases, like violent video games, they assuage
| traumas. Whether it's a recording on a screen or not, can
| our brains tell the difference?
|
| Something is going on, spooky and subtle in the mind that
| makes whatever is on the screen meaningful to us.
|
| I don't want to get us trapped in this false
| interpretation that _in the year 2025_ there is a
| difference between how human beings are affected in the
| physical and digital world. To be frank, it 's stupid to
| think like this, meaning that it's an insult to the
| intelligence of the person who thinks this way and it
| needs to be called out as such in order to encourage them
| to think critically about the matter.
|
| If this whole interaction is just some woopdy doo, willy
| nilly, be that as it may sort of engagement with media,
| what compels us then to entertain the things that we
| don't (or don't want to) attribute to the hard things in
| life?
|
| I'm going to assume your gender and your age to some
| degree here:
|
| Middle-aged men have a tendency to Wednesday Night Sitcom
| Dad their way out of confronting things that bring their
| own vulnerabilities into question and collectively make
| them accountable for figuring out what to do about these
| things, _especially_ if it comes at the cost of comfort
| that they 're trying to preserve that are the accessories
| to their vulnerabilities.
|
| What we're discussing isn't as simple as the "close your
| eyes to avoid cyberbullying" quips of yore:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tyler-the-creators-cyber-
| bull... (in which I make a more blatant attempt at
| guessing which generation you belong to and consequently
| expose my own).
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Close: male but not middle aged
|
| Our brains can't tell the difference, but that's not what
| I said. What I said is that it can be turned off. Social
| media cyberbullying comes along with entanglements that
| keep you on the site. For a shock video, I think the
| suburban dad has a point. To be clear, if someone came up
| to me and said they had really struggled with what they'd
| seen in a shock video as a kid and that it was really
| messing with them, I wouldn't dismiss that or make fun of
| them or something. It's just that the opposite has been
| my experience and the experience of those who I'm close
| to.
| educasean wrote:
| Let's blind all kids. Anyone who is opposed must believe that
| a non-zero chance of a child seeing two women have sex and
| eat turds is normal and healthy.
| deadbabe wrote:
| How exactly do these laws work if the servers are hosted outside
| of the US?
| kelnos wrote:
| They don't, of course. These laws aren't here to protect
| children. They're just a step on the road to one of their
| (conservative Christian) goals: banning pornography entirely in
| the US.
| timeon wrote:
| They will try blackmail hosting country with tariffs.
| narrator wrote:
| Meh they can take the bottom 64bits of your IP address and then
| put your biometrics in there. Why do you think they made the
| address space so big in the first place. I've been saying that's
| what it was for for at least a decade.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| That Tennessee law is particularly crazy:
|
| > (a) Pubic hair, vulva, vagina, penis, testicles, anus, or
| nipple of a human body
|
| Naked bodies do not harm _anyone_. This is US puritanism at its
| peek. Glad the author also pointed out the hypocrisy of treating
| nudity as more obscene than violence.
| LocalH wrote:
| Interestingly (and I suppose fairly?) the law doesn't seem to
| make a distinction between male and female nipples. So an image
| of a shirtless man violates this just as much as an image of a
| shirtless woman.
| VerdisQuo5678 wrote:
| Is there anything we can actually do to combat this? Im short of
| ideas, tho the 33% rule can be potentially worked around by
| generating loads of fake content similar to a previous poster who
| generates fake content for scrapers to eat Im in the UK and they
| recently passed a similar law banning any explicit _imagery_,
| which I already thought was bad but the land of freedom beats us
| out again, the literally surveillance state, at least that's
| that's enforced top down by ofcom instead of an army of injury
| lawyers so it works at ofcom's speed
| jekwoooooe wrote:
| This is insane. Literally goes against the first amendment. What
| recourse is there for this nonsensical decision? Mass
| disobedience? Leaking verified IDs until they stop this?
| ViktorRay wrote:
| This article is incorrect.
|
| The Supreme Court's ruling only applied to obscene sexual
| material. It doesn't apply to sex scenes within artistic works or
| sexual content in general.
|
| There's a test used to determine whether sexual material is
| considered pornographic. It's known as the "I know it when I see
| it" test.
|
| More info on this test here:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
|
| More specifically here is what is considered obscene:
|
| _The criteria were:
|
| 1. whether the average person, applying contemporary community
| standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to
| the prurient interest;
|
| 2. whether the work depicts or describes, in an offensive way,
| sexual conduct or excretory functions, as specifically defined by
| applicable state law;
|
| 3. whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary,
| artistic, political, or scientific value.
|
| The third criterion pertains to judgment made by "reasonable
| persons" of the United States as a whole, while the first
| pertains to that of members of the local community. Due to the
| larger scope of the third test, it is a more ambiguous criterion
| than the first two._
| dyauspitr wrote:
| The article sounds very correct.
|
| Anything can be perceived as "obscene" especially when you
| leave that interpretation open to any particular group.
| bdangubic wrote:
| kissing is obscene :)
| whatsupdog wrote:
| In many cultures, it is. Especially kissing in the public.
| TechRemarker wrote:
| The article would seem correct since "obscene" could be twisted
| to mean whatever they want. As the people making the ruling can
| say the average person believes x.
| Eavolution wrote:
| Who defines an artistic work? If I produce a porn film, why
| isn't that my artistic commentary on sex? Laws cant be this
| subjective because subjectivity implies subjectivity in ruling
| which is objectively awful.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| In the legal sense, a judge would.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| That's an issue
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Yes, I know
| tiahura wrote:
| The jury
| MichaelBosworth wrote:
| Sounds like the article isn't incorrect? The first two criteria
| depend on which community is doing the judging. New Yorkers
| will have a different norm than people from say a quaint
| 5k-person town where there's an 8:1 church:supermarket ratio.
| The third criteria is vague, but vagueness cuts both ways.
| stego-tech wrote:
| The article is, in fact, correct.
|
| Community standards vary by community, both physically and
| digitally. The community standards of a rural town in Utah or
| ChristianDating.net are likely to be wildly different than the
| community standards of a major city on the coastlines or
| PornHub users. This wrinkle is exactly why there's renewed
| efforts to define what obscenity legally is [1], so that it's
| inclusive of as much "porn" as possible.
|
| Additionally, you're conveniently ignoring what the author
| spends most of their piece decrying: the fact that these laws
| permit "ambulance chasing" attorneys to sue across state lines.
| That's the real issue, especially given the fact that some
| state laws can allow civil action to lead to prison time for
| conviction. Even ignoring the potential outcomes however, these
| lawsuits are instantly bankrupting for a majority of Americans,
| and the laws so (intentionally) broadly written that even
| genuinely innocent parties are likely to fork over money to
| make it go away given the cost of mounting a defense.
|
| Put simply: obscenity lacks a firm legal definition, the
| definition of porn is nebulous and variable from person to
| person, and these laws are written to maximize harm to a
| maximal population size. The _intent_ is to criminalize as many
| undesirables as possible, and the current administration and
| political parties have been _transparent_ that anyone not rich,
| white, straight, Christian, and cisgendered male are
| emphatically undesirable.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-
| bill/167...
| tiahura wrote:
| As an ambulance chaser, I can assure you that suing out of
| state defendants for out of state activity has become nearly
| impossible. See Daimler AG v. Bauman (2014), BNSF Railway Co.
| v. Tyrrell (2017), Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court
| (2017), Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District
| (2021), Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. (2023)
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| This article doesn't really go into any detail about the Supreme
| Court decision it discusses, instead reserving its detailed
| discussion for the laws this decision permits. Anyone have a link
| to the opinion, or an article discussing it specifically?
| M95D wrote:
| A more effective solution would be to implement HTML tags for
| explicit sexual content (or any other kind of child-sensitive
| content) and allow the OS or browser to authenticate the user
| before showing that content, if parental controls are enabled.
|
| Legal obligations and responibilities become very clear: the site
| has tags - it's ok. No tags - guilty.
|
| It also allows for very fine-grained delimitation of sexual
| content. No need to forbid access to an entire site for one page,
| or one paragraf of sexual content. Just blur/censor the <adult>
| ... </adult> content.
| recursivegirth wrote:
| I like this, already got face ID built into our devices
| including PCs these days... tap into that. That curbs the whole
| issue of sending your identifying information to third party
| websites.
| dogcomplex wrote:
| The Supreme Court is eroding the credibility of the institution
| of law faster than they can make laws. They really want to see
| how the public reacts to overreach?
| tolerance wrote:
| If sex writing means _so_ much to you then you should feel
| _obliged_ to be persecuted and maimed in the streets and
| corridors for its sake, no?
|
| If pornography is the spirit of mass media to the detriment of
| our youth, would you not feel that it is your civic duty to be
| persecuted and maimed in the streets and corridors for their
| sake, even more so?
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Sex, nudity, etc = Bad
|
| Guns, violence = Good
|
| We live in a very strange country. American Christians must be
| the largest group of hypocrites in history.
| qnleigh wrote:
| I'm still wrapping my head around the consequences of this, which
| almost seem too big to believe. It sounds like there are hundreds
| of millions if not billions to be made on filing these kinds of
| lawsuits, which means change is coming hard and fast. What if
| anything prevents the following?
|
| 1. Lawsuits against content "normalizing LGBTQ+ identity," which
| many conservatives claim is harmful to minors. This creates
| opportunities for conservative groups to file frivolous but
| expensive-to-defend lawsuits targeting LGBTQ+ advocacy online.
| Will this sort of thing get sued out of existence?
|
| 2. Lawyers will first go after the largest targets. Does this
| mean that e.g. large health websites will have to take down
| articles on sex education? Might they even do do preemptively?
|
| 3. Relatedly, will all major US porn websites go behind age gates
| soon? Has this already happened?
| poly2it wrote:
| A bit of a rant on the topic of digital supervision and age
| verification:
|
| Speaking personally, parent supervision was detrimental to my
| development as a child. I recently reached the liberation of
| legal adulthood. While my parents are often sweet, their intents
| did not always have the desired consequences given how they were
| enforced. Until I was around 15, I didn't have any computer I was
| able to freely tinker with, which wasn't constantly supervised
| and constantly logged my every action. I wasn't allowed to touch
| a shell. This was troublesome for me, because I was a computer
| science enthusiast, and my parent did not want me to learn about
| programming. If I had developer tools open, or if it seemed like
| I was running a script, I would get questions. I was pretty much
| restricted to using Scratch (which has a fantastic underground
| community!). Yes, I spent quite a bit of time on my computer. In
| my defense, I didn't have any friends where I lived. Not that I
| didn't want any, I had tried, but at this point I was torted by
| bad experiences. My computer was my safe haven and where I had my
| friends. I did try to explain this, but my parent wasn't
| sympathetic. Expecting a joyous and present individual who should
| be out playing with friends, I was a failure. My parent never
| understood my need for digital freedom, even as it in hindsight
| was all I craved. This is the type of scenario I see playing out
| again every time I am reached by bills/news/opinions like these.
| If my parent had put half of the energy they use to keep me bound
| into supporting my personal development and our relation, things
| could have been very different. Instead, I became very good at
| avoiding filters, supervision and going unnoticed. It's quite a
| sore to me. I sympathise deeply with all the children who had a
| similar upbringing, who are going to suffer under the regulations
| in development, both in the US and in the EU.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| It's time to abandon this sinking ship. America was fun for a
| couple decades but the jig is up.
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean, I think my fellow lefties have gotten too comfortable
| with having a center-left Supreme Court coming up with reason
| after reason to liberally give broad rights.
|
| This is an issue of the legislature. There have been publishing
| restrictions on pornography for centuries, then in the last 20
| years, we decided porn for everyone all the time. The
| conservatives were always going to push back. And I don't think
| it's entirely unreasonable.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| Is "this was restricted for centuries" a moral rule of thumb
| you use consistently? What's your opinion about gay rights,
| woman's suffrage?
| scoofy wrote:
| I'm a liberal. I generally agree with the principle, not the
| premise.
|
| My point again is that these "rights" you're talking about
| are built on our social contract. There is no premise that
| "porn is free speech," in fact, quite the opposite, again,
| for centuries.
|
| The existence of porn on the internet was the result of
| legislation, not right. That legislation is changing, we need
| to organize to make sure it remains legal.
| stego-tech wrote:
| As the OP gets at halfway through:
|
| > Republicans are now labeling anything and everything that has
| to do with sex, and LGBT+ issues, as "pornography" and "obscene"
| and "harmful to minors."
|
| The pornography ban is a red herring. These people will never
| actually ban pornography, because _they consume pornography_. Any
| "ban" they may impose will always conveniently ignore _their_
| consumption of pornography they deem personally acceptable.
|
| The real goal is (re)criminalizing the LGBTQ+ demographic. SCOTUS
| has been chipping away at those old laws for decades, much to the
| chagrin of people whose power comes from harming LGBTQ+
| persons/treating them as scapegoats. It's why these newer laws
| are so vague, and why they allow cross-state civil actions: it's
| to criminalize LGBTQ+ people wholesale, and shove them all back
| into a closet somewhere.
|
| If this was actually about porn on the internet, they'd be
| demanding Playboy get shut down, or PornHub. They're not, because
| _it 's not about pornography_. It's about sharing HRT tips with
| trans youth, it's about saying "gay is okay" on a personal
| website. It's about associating _anything other than
| heterosexuality_ with "porn", criminalizing it, and thus
| criminalizing the populace.
|
| Full stop.
| KumaBear wrote:
| The obscene things in the Bible should be banned as well. Have
| their cake and eat it. Scan an ID that you are 18 to view the
| Bible.
| viraptor wrote:
| It happened a few times https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
| canada-65794363
| anotherevan wrote:
| The Great Bible Battle
|
| https://archive.md/60QZV
| khazhoux wrote:
| This is not the gotcha people think it is. Bible thumpers
| only pay attention to a few sections of the new testament
| anyways.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _These people will never actually ban pornography,_
|
| That's what I used to say about Roe v. Wade. "They'll never
| give up that wedge issue."
| stego-tech wrote:
| They never banned abortions for themselves, just made it more
| difficult to get if you're not getting an "acceptable" one
| (i.e. have the money to go where it's legal or have a private
| family doctor who can make Bastard Fetus go bye-bye).
| raincole wrote:
| > These people will never actually ban pornography
|
| Not sure how one can say that with a straight face when there
| are US states that literally block pornhub, but okay.
|
| > If this was actually about porn on the internet, they'd be
| demanding Playboy get shut down, or PornHub. They're not
|
| ...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You have it backwards, Pornhub preemptively blocked access
| based on geolocation before the bills even passed.
| raincole wrote:
| So Pornhub hates money and traffic?
|
| Of course not. Pornhub blocked these IP because they knew
| it was going to be (and is now) illegal in those states, at
| least at its current form. I see it no different from said
| states banning Pornhub.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Pornhub did it in protest[1], hope this helps.
|
| [1] https://www.abc4.com/news/tech-social-media/pornhub-
| blocks-a...
| omarspira wrote:
| The bills still passed so what's your point? The protest
| failed.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| That you have it backwards, because you do. Pornhub
| preemptively blocked states that were considering
| implementing ID rules, and states are not actively
| blocking Pornhub.
| flatline wrote:
| Note that pornography is not banned here in Texas at least.
| You just have to provide age verification, and PH elected not
| to participate in that process. It doesn't seem like that
| wild a thing at face value.
| raspasov wrote:
| Breaking news: VPN stocks skyrocket.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is laid out in Project 2025[1]:
|
| > _Transgender people will see their existence denied and their
| rights stripped away under Project 2025. The authors equate
| 'transgender ideology' to pornography, calling for it to be
| outlawed. While the far-right policy agenda cannot directly ban
| transgenderism, it aims to do so indirectly by labeling it as
| pornography, and then outlawing pornography itself -
| effectively erasing transgender identity from the U.S._
|
| Similarly, legislators put forth legislation like KOSA with the
| explicit purpose of preventing LGBT kids from connecting with
| peers or learning anything related to their identities[2]:
|
| > _A co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to protect
| children from the dangers of social media and other online
| content appeared to suggest in March that the measure could be
| used to steer kids away from seeing transgender content
| online._
|
| > _In a video recently published by the conservative group
| Family Policy Alliance, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said
| "protecting minor children from the transgender in this
| culture" should be among the top priorities of conservative
| lawmakers._
|
| [1] https://doctorsoftheworld.org/blog/project-2025-lgbtq-
| rights...
|
| [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-
| policy/sena...
| frogperson wrote:
| One of the key tenants of fasicsm is laws that protect the in
| group, but does not bind them, and laws that bind the out group
| but does not protect them.
|
| In other words, rules for thee, but not for me.
|
| Everyone needs to be familair with the 14 points of fascism.
| https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html
| khazhoux wrote:
| You're right that they consume porn, but plenty of them still
| want to ban it. It's all about moralistic virtue signaling by
| immoral people.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Let's state it even more plainly: It's about being able to
| criminalize _anything_ they don 't like. Laying infrastructure
| for surveillance and censorship; an effort which has taken many
| forms and attempts through the decades.
|
| Ironically, it's the same right wing folks who so vehemently
| resist effective computerization of gun registration info,
| because of how they believe such systems can be abused.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In agreement, just to nitpick a single point:
|
| > These people will never actually ban pornography, because
| they consume pornography.
|
| Banning porn won't affect them: mainstream porn will find a way
| (dealing with rulings will just be a cost of business).
|
| And more than anything, making it technically illegal allows
| for selective enforcement, which means a lot more power for
| them to decide who wins and who loses.
| ronbenton wrote:
| I am still waiting for anyone to explain to me why sex is
| constantly vilified more than murder when it comes to art
| censorship
| krapp wrote:
| Christianity.
| trynumber9 wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious. The parent buys the phone/laptop. And when
| little Timmy logs in to his phone the account should be in a
| family/group as a child account.
|
| What's with the obsession with actually verifying identity? Just
| make a web API available to determine if the current user is
| configured as a child account. Why isn't that enough to gate-keep
| access to adult content?
| tyingq wrote:
| So no bounty because it's not a security problem. But the MV3 API
| they are deleting, they say...is being deleted for security
| reasons. Not at all to hobble ad blockers.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Same as it ever was. The government has been congenitally unable
| to strike a rational balance between free speech vs indecency
| statutes. "I know it when I see it" has been a meme since 1964
| when it was written by the Supreme Court. In handing control of
| that balance over to the states, the federal government is just
| giving up. But it won't work. The issue still needs to be
| resolved. We're going to see many, many, many more Supreme Court
| cases on indecency vs free speech.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| FTA: _" In fact, under the laws that the Supreme Court just
| upheld, prosecutors in Tennessee and South Dakota can even reach
| across state lines and prosecute writers on FELONY charges for a
| single paragraph of sexually-explicit writing on my site that
| they think "harmed" kids in their states, facing up to FIFTEEN
| years in prison, for failing to implement ID-checks on my dinky
| little free WordPress site."_
|
| No, they can't. That's not how jurisdiction works in the U.S. If
| states could do stuff like that, GOP prosecutors would be
| charging out-of-state Democratic politicians with made-up-crimes
| all the time. They're not doing that. It's not because they don't
| want to; it's because they can't. (And also, the legal
| justification that would allow them to go after their political
| enemies like this would allow politically-opposed prosecutors to
| do the same to them.)
| conartist6 wrote:
| I feel so bad for the teenager whose mom is parading him around
| as a permanently defective ruined form of life. Could that be
| damaging to a kid do you think?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| One of the goals in Project 2025 is to make teachers, librarians,
| etc. that purvey "pornography" into felons, and jail them for a
| long time. That starts with labeling things as pornography.
|
| Before you know it, anything that mentions LGBTQ+ topics will be
| labeled as porn.
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