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This seems to be popping off in each state back-to-back so I again assume this is some start-up company lobbying to get some tax dollars. There are better opti

This seems to be popping off in each state back-to-back so I again assume this is some start-up company lobbying to get some tax dollars. There are better options that do not involve distributing PII to even more places. [1] As a side note, I would love to be a fly on the wall when they try to legislate this on sites like and similar to 4chan. I suspect Tor onion sites will suddenly become very popular despite their slowness. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34726754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34726754

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ericcumbee 4y ago
Honestly this sounds like the work of a guy by the name of Chris Sevier. He was a lawyer but was disbarred after being ruled mentally incompetent to practice law. He sued for the right to marry his laptop. He has been pushing a variety of bills like this. https://abovethelaw.com/tag/chris-sevier/ https://abovethelaw.com/tag/chris-sevier/
frob 4y ago
Given the current political climate, I would say it's less likely to be because of some start up and more likely to be part of the wider GOP effort to claim the world is full of predators who are trying to corrupt your child's innocence and groom them into sexual beings before their time. They're using the same augument to ban drag and any books the governor's team hasn't preapproved in Florida. We're entering satanic panic 2.
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  It does seem to be starting in the conservative states probably because they would be most open to it. It's also being proposed in the UK. You could be right. Either way this should be stopped because when it reaches critical mass then it's just a matter of time before it becomes federal law. Should that come to pass I would hope they lean towards empowering parents by using the RTA header vs. some 3rd party site that would initially used to protect children and then more controls get added quarterly to protect the next thing and then the entire internet goes the way of Twitter.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    The UK is quite a conservative state and has had several goes at this already, at least one of which fell apart as unworkable.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Time for all those libertarians in red states to speak up in outrage against banning books.
    - krapp 4y ago
      When someone dares to try to ban the Bible, Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries there will be hell to pay.
- aww_dang 4y ago
  This is just one prong advancing the digital ID agenda. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202211/advocacy-groups-urge-us-congress-to-pass-improving-digital-identity-act https://www.biometricupdate.com/202211/advocacy-groups-urge-... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/massive-pandemic-relief-fraud-has-congress-eyeing-digital-ids/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/massive-pandemic...
- jdmtheNth 4y ago
  Satanic panic 2 is seeing "far right" plots and nazis everywhere.
- zirgs 4y ago
  Except it's not irrational this time. Porn has gotten much more extreme and way easier to access than before. When I was a kid - I could only access porn magazines that were relatively tame. Porn industry is not doing anything to prevent children from watching it. If self-regulation is non-existent then the government has to step in.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    Or... parent better? Kids are going to see messed up stuff. Teach them why it's wrong, and that coming to you about it is good. That they should respect women, and other human beings in general, and that porn is almost as fantastical as Star Wars. And restrict their internet yourself if it's that big of a deal. I'm sick of people sucking at their responsibilities so much that they think the government doing it for them is a great option. It's lazy.
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      As much as I agree, it is a little unsettling to see how extreme porn can be, specifically because of how easy it is to accidentally stumble across something extreme even when you didn't intend to. Even "hardcore" porn seems to have gotten harder-core in my lifetime alone, and if it weren't for the Web I'd probably never have seen anything other than old-school softcore stuff until much later in my life. People are absolutely entitled to their own tastes, on or off camera, in a consensual setting. But I also think we can come up with better "on-ramps" to pornography and the wide variety of sex acts that exist in the world, without allowing young people to wander without warning into STEPMOM LET ME PUT IT WHERE?? DONT TELL DAD and YOUNG ANGEL TRIPLE GANGBANG and THINKING ABOUT MY CRUSH WHILE DOING FAIRLY EXTREME THINGS TO MY BUTT (a real title that I will never forget, and yes they were "extreme" even by today's standards). Not to mention the subtle racism and often-not-subtle misogyny that still exists in traditional porn tropes, and IMO might be more harmful than actually watching porn itself. Also the sheer amount of step-sibling porn on the free porn "tube" sites is especially weird and disconcerting, given that young people are most likely to see porn there and not on, say, an private OnlyFans channel or a production studio site like Brazzers. Of course, we can't ever guide our children to healthy relationships with sex and pornography unless we actually talk about pornography with our children, which as a society we are not well-equipped to do.
donmcronald 4y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if big tech has a hand in it. There's a need to improve reputation and trust online and I think big tech is planning to use their new passwordless systems to marry identity and trust in a way that will make them the arbiters of identity and trustworthiness via attestation. It'll start with having no passwords to remember, but before you know it parts of the internet will quit working if you don't have a big tech company vouching for you (not a bot, is an adult, etc.). As long as you log in with your Microsoft/Google/Apple account everything will be great, but if you don't nothing will work. Non-tech people will be easily convinced with claims that logging in everywhere ensures bots and bad actors are excluded while "good" users can surf anywhere without hitting captchas, etc..
nerdponx 4y ago
I don't think they will, if only because Reddit also has plenty of "NSFW" content, and there would be a ton of pushback on adding ID verification to Reddit.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> This seems to be popping off in each state back-to-back so I again assume this is some start-up company lobbying to get some tax dollars. It’s been a thing in the conservative (in the very broad sense, where this includes a substantial subset of the Democratic Party, as well as most of the GOP) end of US politics for a long time to ban, restrict, and discourage (by requiring private information that is guaranteed to eventually be exposed) access to porn for a long time, e.g., while it did not explicitly require ID, the Communication’s Decency Act of 1996 required age verification, which sites attempted to comply with (before it was struck down) by requiring credit cards on file for even free accounts. Somewhat similar requirements were included in the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (which was also struck down.) COPA being struck down chilled legislative pursuit of this, though not the desire for it; I suspect the reason it has come up again now is the evidence that we have a Supreme Court majority that is both ideologically socially conservative and much less concerned about established precedent, at least on politically salient issues of interest to their social ideology, than has been the case in living memory (or, perhaps, ever), and legislators want to take full advantage of that while it lasts.
hotpotamus 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_... I don't know that this is the work of ALEC, but its existence and goal is hardly some secret conspiracy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ericcumbee 4y ago

Honestly this sounds like the work of a guy by the name of Chris Sevier. He was a lawyer but was disbarred after being ruled mentally incompetent to practice law. He sued for the right to marry his laptop. He has been pushing a variety of bills like this. https://abovethelaw.com/tag/chris-sevier/ https://abovethelaw.com/tag/chris-sevier/

frob 4y ago

Given the current political climate, I would say it's less likely to be because of some start up and more likely to be part of the wider GOP effort to claim the world is full of predators who are trying to corrupt your child's innocence and groom them into sexual beings before their time. They're using the same augument to ban drag and any books the governor's team hasn't preapproved in Florida. We're entering satanic panic 2.

LinuxBender 4y ago
It does seem to be starting in the conservative states probably because they would be most open to it. It's also being proposed in the UK. You could be right. Either way this should be stopped because when it reaches critical mass then it's just a matter of time before it becomes federal law. Should that come to pass I would hope they lean towards empowering parents by using the RTA header vs. some 3rd party site that would initially used to protect children and then more controls get added quarterly to protect the next thing and then the entire internet goes the way of Twitter.
- pjc50 4y ago
  The UK is quite a conservative state and has had several goes at this already, at least one of which fell apart as unworkable.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Time for all those libertarians in red states to speak up in outrage against banning books.
  - krapp 4y ago
    When someone dares to try to ban the Bible, Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries there will be hell to pay.
aww_dang 4y ago
This is just one prong advancing the digital ID agenda. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202211/advocacy-groups-urge-us-congress-to-pass-improving-digital-identity-act https://www.biometricupdate.com/202211/advocacy-groups-urge-... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/massive-pandemic-relief-fraud-has-congress-eyeing-digital-ids/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/massive-pandemic...
jdmtheNth 4y ago
Satanic panic 2 is seeing "far right" plots and nazis everywhere.
zirgs 4y ago
Except it's not irrational this time. Porn has gotten much more extreme and way easier to access than before. When I was a kid - I could only access porn magazines that were relatively tame. Porn industry is not doing anything to prevent children from watching it. If self-regulation is non-existent then the government has to step in.
- seanw444 4y ago
  Or... parent better? Kids are going to see messed up stuff. Teach them why it's wrong, and that coming to you about it is good. That they should respect women, and other human beings in general, and that porn is almost as fantastical as Star Wars. And restrict their internet yourself if it's that big of a deal. I'm sick of people sucking at their responsibilities so much that they think the government doing it for them is a great option. It's lazy.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    As much as I agree, it is a little unsettling to see how extreme porn can be, specifically because of how easy it is to accidentally stumble across something extreme even when you didn't intend to. Even "hardcore" porn seems to have gotten harder-core in my lifetime alone, and if it weren't for the Web I'd probably never have seen anything other than old-school softcore stuff until much later in my life. People are absolutely entitled to their own tastes, on or off camera, in a consensual setting. But I also think we can come up with better "on-ramps" to pornography and the wide variety of sex acts that exist in the world, without allowing young people to wander without warning into STEPMOM LET ME PUT IT WHERE?? DONT TELL DAD and YOUNG ANGEL TRIPLE GANGBANG and THINKING ABOUT MY CRUSH WHILE DOING FAIRLY EXTREME THINGS TO MY BUTT (a real title that I will never forget, and yes they were "extreme" even by today's standards). Not to mention the subtle racism and often-not-subtle misogyny that still exists in traditional porn tropes, and IMO might be more harmful than actually watching porn itself. Also the sheer amount of step-sibling porn on the free porn "tube" sites is especially weird and disconcerting, given that young people are most likely to see porn there and not on, say, an private OnlyFans channel or a production studio site like Brazzers. Of course, we can't ever guide our children to healthy relationships with sex and pornography unless we actually talk about pornography with our children, which as a society we are not well-equipped to do.

donmcronald 4y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if big tech has a hand in it. There's a need to improve reputation and trust online and I think big tech is planning to use their new passwordless systems to marry identity and trust in a way that will make them the arbiters of identity and trustworthiness via attestation. It'll start with having no passwords to remember, but before you know it parts of the internet will quit working if you don't have a big tech company vouching for you (not a bot, is an adult, etc.). As long as you log in with your Microsoft/Google/Apple account everything will be great, but if you don't nothing will work. Non-tech people will be easily convinced with claims that logging in everywhere ensures bots and bad actors are excluded while "good" users can surf anywhere without hitting captchas, etc..

nerdponx 4y ago

I don't think they will, if only because Reddit also has plenty of "NSFW" content, and there would be a ton of pushback on adding ID verification to Reddit.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> This seems to be popping off in each state back-to-back so I again assume this is some start-up company lobbying to get some tax dollars. It’s been a thing in the conservative (in the very broad sense, where this includes a substantial subset of the Democratic Party, as well as most of the GOP) end of US politics for a long time to ban, restrict, and discourage (by requiring private information that is guaranteed to eventually be exposed) access to porn for a long time, e.g., while it did not explicitly require ID, the Communication’s Decency Act of 1996 required age verification, which sites attempted to comply with (before it was struck down) by requiring credit cards on file for even free accounts. Somewhat similar requirements were included in the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (which was also struck down.) COPA being struck down chilled legislative pursuit of this, though not the desire for it; I suspect the reason it has come up again now is the evidence that we have a Supreme Court majority that is both ideologically socially conservative and much less concerned about established precedent, at least on politically salient issues of interest to their social ideology, than has been the case in living memory (or, perhaps, ever), and legislators want to take full advantage of that while it lasts.

hotpotamus 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_... I don't know that this is the work of ALEC, but its existence and goal is hardly some secret conspiracy.