In other news, VPN subscriptions have skyrocketed in the U.S South.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
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Honestly, it might be a good thing long-run to have a higher percentage of users on VPNs. They aren't a magic cure-all, but they do help make it safer to use untrusted networks and discourage some things on the service side, like geolocating and data-mining users based on IP.
"This might address some security problems" is somewhat abstract to appeal to most users, I think. "VPN or no tits" is something that I think is more generally-relatable.
I'm worried it will lead to bans of those though too.
Not that they won't try, but it's very difficult to blanket ban VPNs. There are very legitimate business reasons to use them and it isn't necessarily easy for ISPs to distinguish between a "recreational" VPN connection and an employee VPN'ing into say, a work datacenter. Industry will kick up a massive fuss about it.
Hell, I VPN into my home network all the time to access my self hosted work applications, it's 10x more secure than leaving ports open to the wider internet.
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This legislation was sponsored by NORD VPN
Join now for 50% off by using the promo code: REPUBLIC OF GILEAD
(or just sneak into your parents bedroom closet and watch the live show, if you are Alabamian)
The exact phrasing varies, but in most states, the details of the law are the same: Any “commercial entity” that publishes “material harmful to minors” online can be held liable—meaning, tens of thousands of dollars in fines and/or private lawsuits—if it doesn’t “perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.”
Sure seems like that would cover a lot of websites, including most news sites.
Yay, another paywall link
404 Media: we're not like the rest. Except when we are.
I wouldn't quite call it a paywall. This article is free with an email sign up. They discussed this before and not sure I believe it but their reason/excuse for free email sign up was to combat AI scrapers. They noticed their articles were getting scraped by a few well known AI scrape and repost "news" sites.
How long until somebody automates the scraping with throw-away email addresses?
Wrong question. How long ago, you mean.
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Hence, no one watches porn anymore. /s
good, god fearing christians should only watch mormon porn
If they actually wanted to protect children, the answer is simple: reverse the responsibilities. Require porn sites to include metadata indicating it isn't safe for minors. Require browsers to recognize that metadata, and filter out that content if parental controls are enabled. If parents are still too lazy to turn it on, make it default (like "safe search", but more effective). The fact none of them have even suggested this is proof they don't care about children or even porn, they just want to be seen as if they do.
Parental control software like Adguard or Adguard DNS family protection, filter out NSFW content like this website. A website doesn't even need to do a thing for it to work.
They don't care about anything other than watching you. They don't care how old you are. That's just an excuse.
Yeah I hate when the real topic gets buried in nonsense white noise. This is PURELY about collecting those IDs and data.
This is devastating for my "southerners watching pornhub" kink.
Or does it make it more taboo and thus more appealing?
*turns to look at Alabama expectantly*
Conservatism has been forcefully on the rise, but something like porn can cause it's downfall. It reminds me of the videotape format wars end 70s, early 80s, with VHS pushing out Betamax due to porn.
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South of the border you can no longer watch films that go “South of the Border”.
Praise be. By his hand. May the Lord open.
Gilead voted for this...
Temba, at rest.
Good thing there's more than one porn website then I guess. Don't tell them.
Its all porn, pornhub just prohibits itself from operating in states that pass this legislation.
The legislation in question requires you to prove you're over 18 to enter these sites. Whether that's through id or credit card info. However, this can lead to some pretty insane security issues. Just imagine if the id of every user along with their browsing data got leaked.
So instead, pornhub just refuses to operate in those states.
A surprising number of adult sites have been blocked. Most who abide by the block are the big branded companies. There are plenty who just ignore it, but those are mostly smaller aggregate sites that if one goes down, there are a dozen others just like it.
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I'm not showing my driver's license to any porn website, that's stupid.
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They all have cousins, so..
John Perry Barlow was right: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
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Interesting to learn that Pornhub now requires "identity verification for uploaders." That must've had the same effect on a lot of non-professional uploaders that the new laws will have on U.S. viewers, making them go elsewhere.
They purged everything for unverified uploaders in 2020:
"As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program," Pornhub said in a company blog post, as first reported by Vice. The purge appears to have hit almost 9 million of the 13.5 million videos on Pornhub as of Sunday, or nearly two-thirds of all the content hosted on the site.
"This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute," the company added. "In today’s world, all social media platforms share the responsibility to combat illegal material. Solutions must be driven by real facts and real experts. We hope we have demonstrated our dedication to leading by example."
The swipe at other social media platforms is no accident. "It is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform," the company added. Citing Facebook's transparency report, the company added, "Over the last three years, Facebook self-reported 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material. During that same period, the independent, third-party Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub. That is still 118 too many, which is why we are committed to taking every necessary action."
Citing Facebook's transparency report, the company added, "Over the last three years, Facebook self-reported 84 million instances of child sexual abuse material. During that same period, the independent, third-party Internet Watch Foundation reported 118 incidents on Pornhub. That is still 118 too many, which is why we are committed to taking every necessary action."
Some Balatro level shade being thrown there.
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I changed my vpn to several locations to see what would happen when I brought up pornhub and xnxx. Miami blocked pornhub, but not xnxx. Houston and Atlanta blocked neither. YMMV
Perhaps they have made the decision to treat all IP addresses that aren't officially marked as residential connections in known locations as being in international waters. As the wave of censorship continues, they'll most likely be required to block VPN users and other "data centre" IPs well before the VPN services themselves are banned.
I hate purity culture.
Since that article is paywalled: Can someone from there enlighten me? Is it just some of the major platforms? Do you still have access to xhamster, xvideos and whatever? And how likely is it that those get blocked, too, in the near future?
it's a matter of time before all the porn sites effectively go "we don't want to deal with this legislation or with handling the PIIest of data. we'll just IP block this whole region"
Ah, I was under the impression that these porn sites got blocked... But it's the other way around, the porn sites block the users because they don't/can't implement the regulations.... Thx for explaining.
The regulations are essentially "you need to take the ID of everyone who uses your site and hand it over to the government to protect the children". Privacy be damned, and I guarantee it's going to become more and more widespread.
I got some eID and it's supposed to do age verification for like a decade now. And they must have hired some proper computer science experts, because the idea was to implement this as a "zero knowledge proof". Which is a very nice concept: You can prove your age to a porn site completely anonymously, without revealing anything (not even your exact age), just that you're above a certain age.
Of course no one uses that system 😑
The technology for sure is out there. So if the true motivation is to block access for minors... We could just do it. Only takes an id with a chip on it and/or a smartphone app.
Just like accessing direct messages or any other form of personal data, it's never actually about the children.
Sadly true. And happens we've just started discussing total internet surveillence again, here in Germany. This time it's an exception from the rule and not about the usual "would someone please think of the children". But it's not any better. For some reason they're always pushing for data retention / surveillance / snooping on private messages here.
That's the point of the regulations. Directly banning porn sites would be unconstitutional, but there's a loophole.
Kind of how they went after marijuana in order to target Black people.
That is actually what is happening. Nothing in the Florida law blocks these sites, they just don't want to deal with it.
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