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.
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.
So no one wants to talk about how maybe we should just be talking to our kids about sexuality? This is just the absence only crowd again. And of course it’s taking the rest of our liberties with it but can we stop framing this has tech was of protecting children here? It’s Trojan horse bullshit.
It’s the sex doesn’t exist if we don’t talk about it crowd. Just like they don’t like talking about the gays or the trans or CRT. Talking about any of these things means accommodation and mental effort has to be expended. Can’t have that.
Yeah. I’m sure it’s awkward, but it’s also necessary. My mom was honest and open about such topics with me and it was really good for me. It meant that had an adult touched me inappropriately as a child I knew what to do and that I could trust my mom to keep me safe and it meant that as I grew older and began experimenting I wasn’t taking undue risks because I knew enough to make reasonably informed decisions.
Teenagers are going to engage in sexual exploration. Some won’t, sure, but most of them are pretty hardwired to want to try and to be willing to break rules to do it. And, given that they’re inexperienced and dealing with a hormonal hurricane some of them will make choices they regret. We can bury our heads in the sand and swear up and down that our kids know better because we told them not to do it, or we can grow the fuck up and accept that little kids need to know how to report a bad touch, elementary schoolers need to know what their body will do in a few years, and teenagers need to know enough to make informed choices when they inevitably experiment
Mad conservative computer scientists: “Yes, using the fear that kids might see porno, we will soon require the implementation of the impossible device: Anonymous age verification! Since no one will be able to implement it, we will ban all pornography off the internet!”
Mad liberal computer scientists: : “Using generative AI, anyone can now produce any porno they want, even offline! And the interface is so easy that even a kid can use it!”
Porn companies: “We will have the computer take a picture of you and analyze your age to grant access.”
Users: Uses generative AI to generate fake pictures to get access to real porn.
User: uses the VPN they had already
It’s there like, 3,000,000 other porn sites people can use? I don’t hover how this is a victory in any form.
don’t even for a second think this is in favour of you.
it’s some weird christian idea that the human must be “purified” and watching porn stops that. it’s about an ideology, not about you or your wellbeing.
Right. “Protecting children”. Meanwhile, lowering the age range for child workers…
“No beating off! You need to save your energy for the night shift.”
https://clockify.me/learn/business-management/minimum-working-age-by-state/
they keep saying its about trans people but then they keep blocking porn so i don’t know what it is. i think christians and conservatives are stupid as fuck
Every time that a conservative equates the mere existence of trans people with sex, they’re just outing their own kink.
it’s mostly because the red hats love trans porn, and hate themselves for loving trans porn, and they just need a little help resisting temptation
Socially accepted mental illness
“it’s for the children” is always a red flag
classic fascist tactic. there’s a reason half of the 14 words is about children
Except when it’s Wu-Tang!
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.
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.
“Another method, used in Germany, lets people show their ID card at a post office and get a unique ID to access adult sites. This could potentially be done without logging the person’s identity, but as CNIL points out such systems require much work to set up.”
This exactly what I was thinking of while reading the article. It’s just like going to a bar and getting carded. As long as no info is stored, I would be fine with this if were seriously looking for a solution for the kids
When I got my first smart phone, to access adult media and even Facebook, I needed to go in to a shop and verify my age using ID and they edited my account details, with this phone I had an instantly refunded penny charge on my credit card. There are very simple ways around it, which they apparently aren’t interested in.
Who is “they” in this context.
Honest question I promise. I don’t understand what’s going on…
I don’t know a lot either. By “they” I just mean those who are trying to ban porn.
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?
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.
It’s a classic tactic, use a somewhat legitimate concern (Minors having access to pornography). And blow it far out of proportion, and use it as an excuse to crackdown on what you’re really after. You will see people defending these bans because the “reasoning” they’re being presented SEEMS rational, but unwittingly they’re supporting a mass crackdown on their own rights.
See also: The constant push by governments to take away our right to private (encrypted) communications.
ItS tO prOteCT the CHILDRen’s comMUNIcaTIoN.
yeah no for sure and that’s why we should all install spyware onto our phones. there’s no “switch in the settings” to turn it off. (for a recent example, see the EU commission’s newest proposals.)
somewhat legitimate concern (Minors having access to pornography).
Counterpoint: accessing pornography is part of growing up.
deleted by creator
There’s A LOT of unhealthy porn, especially for kids. Especially for kids with no sex education. It’s also easier for them to get addicted.
You could also say alcohol is part of growing up, because for many it is.
Yeah, but the people banning porn are also banning sex Ed, so definitely seems more about control/abuse of power than concern for kids.
An oppressed and suppressed population is easier to control
Literally 1984
deleted by creator
There’s A LOT of unhealthy porn, especially for kids. Especially for kids with no sex education.
Which is why comprehensive sex ed is so important.
Honestly learned more (and better) sex ed from porn than school. hentai specifically i could see putting age restrictions on, shit is horrifyingly accessible and has no semblance of consent as a concept.
Hentai is just drawn porn. Not all of it is rape stuff, and there’s loads of rape/incest/abuse roleplay in live action porn too.
Like spitting in an open asshole? Lets face it, the industry is pretty fucked up.
Just so I’m clear, porn should be available and these laws are privacy and security nightmares.
I learned everything I know about human growth and development from spitting into open assholes.
So, to an extent sure, I don’t think it’s some horrible thing for simply moralistic reasons, everyone has to discover their sexuality one way or another. However, I do think maybe having an entire digital library of smut dumped in your lap the moment you have access to a smartphone and some private time is probably not good for your sexual development. Ideally we’d just have parents/guardians use some common sense and take advantage of parental controls to limit access. But, we both know that many are neglectful or simply busy with trying to make ends meet to constantly monitor these things. Is the right answer government intervention? I’m personally more than a little skeptical, but I can see why some people see it as a valid concern.
But the old ways of stumbling across smut are gone now. No finding someone’s porno mag stash, or accessing uncensored porn on the illegal cable box, or reading the smut novels at the grocery store checkout, or the porn VHS section behind the bead curtain at Family Video…
I am just wondering in which age you grew up. Most millennial (like me) had access to a digital library of smut while growing up, and I certainly made use of it.
Won’t someone pleeeeeease think of the children!
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.
Just like the tsa deleted all the body scan images after the subject left the scanner.
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
It might stop when the DB gets compromised and some exec gets threatened with the release of all his weird kinks going public.
You know you really didn’t have to call me out so viscerally like that.
So everybody looks like the picture on Epstein’s Wikipedia now? How dumb is this?
What stops you from taking a picture of a picture of some random adult’s face?
Everyone should just upload a picture of Trump.
Or an AI generated one even
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.
Liveness detection.
A picture of a video, then?
Nah man.
Hahaha how easy it will be to fool the AI.
Why? Just take a picture of your neighbor.
In my experience these type of verifications require you to look forward, then to the right, then to the left, acquiring a 3 dimensional data plot. Which cannot be done with a picture. Maybe if you had 3 pictures.
“Why does your son carry around a mannequin?”
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.
So to you it is not fooling the AI if you present someone else? Where would fooling start?
“While privacy-focused age verification methods exist, regulatory clarity is lacking.”
It’s not lacking clarity. Privacy-focused age verification is simply not wanted by big tech and politically (because money from big tech) as they wouldn’t be able to collect and make money with building profiles of what you do online.
Fascists view sexuality as a threat to their movements.
Also: laughing, knowing things, joy.
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.
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.
