Summary
Several U.S. states have enacted laws requiring pornography sites, such as PornHub, to implement age verification to prevent minors’ access, prompting the site’s parent company, Aylo, to block access in affected states.
Proponents argue these laws protect children, while critics highlight privacy risks, inefficiencies, and potential censorship.
These measures reflect growing social conservatism, with some advocates aiming to restrict adult content broadly.
While privacy-focused age verification methods exist, regulatory clarity is lacking.
Critics warn these laws may suppress responsible platforms, favoring unregulated alternatives, and escalate broader culture wars around sexuality and LGBTQ+ rights.
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I’m gonna be honest, I think it is good to restrict to make sure its not so easy to access for kids. Also, I think porn just demeans women and pushes that they’re just a piece of meat.
A conversation can be had about if the way the restriction was done was good or bad or if it can be done in a better way.
You’re kind of missing the point entirely. We already know that the current methods used to verify age aren’t privacy-respecting and only serve to block legitimate use.
I think they mean the other way around…
“That is because all those states have passed laws requiring porn websites to verify that their users are under-18”
It would be kind of funny to make a kids only website (NOT porn) and have it fail to load if you enter an ID
“it’s for the children” is always a red flag
Except when it’s Wu-Tang!
classic fascist tactic. there’s a reason half of the 14 words is about children
Depends on the context. After WW2 a lot of great things were done in favour of future generations, or the children of that time.
In these times hate is being used to divide us while at the same time it’s socially and morally unacceptable to justify certain views, thus they look for pseudo reasons to mask their true reasons, in this case -for the children". Unfortunately we’re also entering a time where the psuedo reasons start becoming obsolete as hate mongering is being accepted.
So i gotta disagree on the always, but it’s true for these times.
step
- declare children don’t understand the world
- declare children can’t make reasonable choices
- parents and officials now get to decide what children do or don’t
- have obedient slaves.
At the core of the debate is a genuinely thorny technical and legal question: how to verify someone’s age over the internet without exposing them to cyber theft or government surveillance.
Age verification providers are adamant that this is possible.
I agree that it is possible if you can guarantee absolutely zero corruption in the system. Which you cannot.
Proving, in a safe, privacy-friendly way, that you’re able to provide to some third-party website credentials proving that you’re an adult, is very easily doable. Most countries decided against the good version of it, but it is doable.
It does not, however, prove anything regarding the actual user in front of the computer. Let’s remind people that we live in a world where kids have access to their parent’s CC and regularly abuse it online. I doubt “more technical stuff” will prevent them from getting their hand on whatever certificate/token/thingamajig would be used for age check.
Unless we consider “good practice and proper communication”, or, parenting, to be a key point in this. In which case, there’s no need to do any technical implementation at all in the first place.
They’re compiling a list and they’ll find a way to use it against you. Anyone who thinks the age-verification services won’t share their data with the states is naive. Use a VPN and only pay using an anonymous prepaid card, and if that doesn’t work, pirate the content.
While privacy-focused age verification methods exist
What might those be, and have they been reviewed by anyone with actual knowledge of security?
Fascists view sexuality as a threat to their movements.
Fascists view knowledge as a threat. They use sexuality as another means of segregation.
They view it as another tool to oppress us. They know it’s not a threat to them. The only threat to them is organized resistance.
sexuality is the core of human desire, and if you suppress that, you suppress the development of the individual’s sense of self-determination. that’s why it’s so important to the government so suppress sexuality.
there are other reasons, of course. for example, almost everyone nowadays is overworked, and of course that leads to a decline in relationships.
also, people are stronger together. sexuality brings people together. if you can suppress the sexuality of large swaths of people, you can basically hinder the forming of social coherence and community.
Also: laughing, knowing things, joy.
Removed by mod
With this method, users take a photo of their face which is then analyzed by AI to estimate their age. Tombs says this involves no analysis of the user’s actual identity, and that all photos are deleted once the check is finished. Hence, neither Yoti nor the porn site ever needs to know who you are.
No. Fuck no. Just… wow.
So everybody looks like the picture on Epstein’s Wikipedia now? How dumb is this?
I rate they’re intending to keep those photos, but will stop when an exec with a little bit of humanity has a change of heart after checking the database when he realises he is looking into the eyes of a unkempt man with visible depression who is going to spend the next 15 minutes trying to settle on a video and another two minutes masturbating.
when an exec with a little bit of humanity has a change of heart
You know you really didn’t have to call me out so viscerally like that.
It might stop when the DB gets compromised and some exec gets threatened with the release of all his weird kinks going public.
What stops you from taking a picture of a picture of some random adult’s face?
Or an AI generated one even
Liveness detection.
A picture of a video, then?
Fuck that rando, I guess?
Just generate a fake face with some generative tool.
Or, you know, be as appalled by this as I am and complain loudly. Maybe if enough of us do it it’ll become more trouble than it’s worth.
Rando? I’d use a face of Trump or Musk or some other public figure.
Everyone should just upload a picture of Trump.
Just like the tsa deleted all the body scan images after the subject left the scanner.
Hahaha how easy it will be to fool the AI.
Why? Just take a picture of your neighbor.
Yes, for example. Not sure what the “why” is supposed to be for? At what point to you disagree?
I meant that there’s no need to fool the ai, the system is fundamentally flawed from the start.
Several U.S. states have enacted laws requiring pornography sites, such as PornHub, to implement age verification to prevent minors’ access
Doesn’t seem too unreasonable. When I buy alcohol I have to provide verification that I’m over 21.
The thing is, how do they enforce it? People in those states can still access pornhub through a VPN. Plus, what about all the other many, many porn sites?
I get what they’re trying to do, but I think there are some logistics that haven’t really been thought out.
You’re kind of missing the point entirely. We already know that the current methods used to verify age aren’t privacy-respecting and only serve to block legitimate use.
All I’m saying is I don’t think the age verification requirement, in and of itself, is unreasonable. I’m not necessarily in opposition to better, more privacy-respecting verification methods, nor am I necessarily opposed to, for instance the age verification requirement being lifted until better age verification technology can be developed. All I’m saying is I personally do not find the age verification requirement itself to be unreasonable. That’s it.
They expect the porn provider to verify age/id through very invasive and onerous means. It is in no way reasonable or secure to give some random porn site a copy of your government ID. They will get hacked; not if, when.
They will get hacked; not if, when.
Not only that, it turns any site that doesn’t just outright block the age verification states into a massive target.
When I buy alcohol I have to provide verification that I’m over 21
I was unaware that porn could kill you.
I never said that it could.
Are you suggesting that it should be legal to sell alcohol to children so long as it’s not a lethal amount? Should a kid be able to buy a single beer? It’s not like it’s going to kill them.
What about selling physical media pornography in a store to children? Should that be legal? It’s not going to kill them. Should a kid be able to walk into a porn store and slap down his allowance for a copy of Hardcore Anal Superstars 2?
This is a terrible analogy. Liquor purchases aren’t tracked by your ID. It’s not even mandatory to scan your ID to purchase alcohol.
Not your fault. Nobody can be aware of everything.
And yes, people have fapped to porn until they had a heart attack and died due to it.
Source?
My bad. Remembered heart attack story instead of stroke one.
https://nrtimes.co.uk/masturbation-linked-to-stroke-in-medical-case-study/
In other words, could have happened whether he was masturbating or having sex. Wasn’t the masturbation that caused it, was the orgasm. I guess we’re just not supposed to orgasm now?
Regardless, porn wasn’t mentioned anywhere in that article.
Also…
The study authors say that they found just two other cases of masturbation-linked strokes in other scientific literature.
A whole two cases (three counting the linked one). Doesn’t really seem like an epidemic now, does it? Considering legit every boy does it, and the ones that deny it are likely lying.
But that’s just it, they have thought about the logistics. We already have Meta changing their rules to allow LGBTQ + people to be called “mentally ill” with no repercussions.
The Great Firewall of China isn’t an accident, it’s actually how internet hardware like routers and switches are built to work from the ground up, with security like access control lists, as well as logging connections and seeing what data goes where and so on. That’s the scary thing about the internet, it just takes people wanting to turn it into a draconian nightmare to flip a few switches. I mean, really, the US already has but it just feels like it less because of the release valve of “free speech.” The NSA Utah datacenter has been around for a while now.
They have thought about the logistics, and they want to bring those kind of controls here. As always the plan is to control what happens online. Musk has definitely made some weird and creepy comments about “making lists” and while he’s an idiot, he’s got the tools and people to make it happen.
They couch it in a reasonable position to start the path to blocking access to content about sexuality for anyone. When youre a queer kid growing up and being told that it’s just the devil’s work and other bullshit the internet and being able to talk about your experience was the first freeing thing you could do in your life. It also lead to women having higher standards because women could communicate more and not be isolated by their male partners controlling behavior. Conservatives fucking hate that. This kind of ban could ban that kind of speech online, and I firmly believe it’s intended to.
They, meaning the people behind the bans, have thought it through perfectly well. They are counting on milquetoast centrists to ‘both sides’ the issue so they can start to attack LGBTQ+ people and their concerns as being inherently indecent.
The most surprising thing to me is that PornHub is owned by a multinational Canada based private equity firm Aylo. I guess surprising might not be the right word, maybe morbidly reassuring that no one escapes from the slimy hands of late capitalism.
Yeah, let’s get back to small business “mom and pop” pornography vendors!
Often on 1337x I find nsfw stuff. I wonder if there are people torrenting this stuff
Its about VPN sales.
I’m curious what this graph looks like compared to states with legal weed.
Lol. Montana’s wilding up there. Toke up all you please, but no porn.
I think the most fascinating thing is that of out of all states Idaho seems to be the only one that doesn’t even allow medical use.
(Not that the low THC states are much better… you could probably get similar or better stuff from the gas station/head shop in almost any state after McConnells farm bill pseudo legalized it)
While privacy-focused age verification methods exist
verification methods may ‘exist’, but there are exactly zero which can guarantee security and privacy.
“trust me bro” isn’t good enough for you? What’re you hiding?
There are thousands of porn sites. Blocking pornhub doesn’t even register. If someone wants to find porn it is no more difficult than it was the day before the ban, it just won’t be pornhub porn.
I think this is just step one. Once the porn sites with money stop fighting it then they will go after any search engine that lists porn sites.
If you can’t find it on Google/Bing/Etc. it may as well not even exist for a majority of people.
I welcome the re-emergence of newsgroups again.
It would be funny if it just ended up teaching everyone how to torrent stuff.
These states didn’t block pornhub, pornhub blocked these states. Those states passed laws that would require legitimately operated adult sites to check ID at entry and then worry about keeping that information secure against breaches. This is more likely step 1 for those states to taking legal action against websites they deem are “adult oriented” for mentioning Queer people existing and not checking ID first.
The biggest issue here is that (at least in Texas), your ID has to be checked by a specific company.
I didn’t know that… That’s even worse. It is probably a company already setup to share data with Texas officials for the purpose of oppression.
They must know that that’s the case. Even if they blocked the entire internet in those states, porn would still be easily accessible. Blocking PornHub is just whacking a single mole in a huge field full of them.
At least they’re wasting some of their time with this limp-dicked bullshit. Better than using it to pursue their broader, more sinister goals.
