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Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material
- hooverd 4y agoHow would these even work?
- izacus 4y agoPoorly and frustratingly for users.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 4y agoIt sounds like parental controls would just be turned on by default.
- bigbacaloa 4y agoPuritan americans going to ruin everything if they can.
- FredPret 4y agoWell, Americans made my phone, the backbone of the internet, and maybe the porn too
- toastal 4y agoIf the first two can be a result of tax-funded research, we need tax-funded porn too!
- unlikelymordant 4y agoIm pretty sure the 'puritan americans' made none of those things
- kergonath 4y agoMy phone was made in China, the Internet is global, and my porn most certainly isn’t American puritan. Cultural imperialism is just as bad when the US does it than when Russia does.
- FredPret 4y agoA designed-in-California phone that is made using designed-in-California production processes and funded by American dollars is only nominally "made in China". The "global" internet is very much more American than it is marketed to be; including having been invented there and having most of its backbone there. I remember growing up in Africa and connecting to the "international" network. I found almost only American businesses and content.
- colechristensen 4y agoHere’s the problem with the abortion win: those same people are going to keep fighting for more and more things.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jedberg 4y ago> One of these anti-pornography bills was passed into law in 2021 in Utah but cannot go into effect unless five additional states pass similar laws — a provision included to prevent Big Tech companies from isolating the state after passing the law. Ok so they have to isolate five small states instead? I don't think the tech companies will worry until California, New York, or Texas pass this law.
- kube-system 4y agoThe reason Utah likely has that provision is because they would comply, but in the easiest of ways: if a state is too small to bother, stop selling the devices there.
- piotrkaminski 4y ago> This year, Florida, South Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, Iowa, Idaho, *Texas* and Montana lawmakers are all considering versions of the bill (emphasis added)
- jedberg 4y agoYes I saw that. I’m saying they won’t worry until Texas actually gets past “considering”
- irrational 4y agoBased on recent history, I’m astonished they haven’t already passed it.
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoI mean… https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/12/ted-cruz-twitter-account-likes-pornographic-tweet https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/12/ted-cruz-twi...
- LinuxBender 4y agoThere have already been at least 3 other states trying to make this law. They've been discussed here on HN. I do not have links handy. So they may very well be on the path to their goals. [Edit] Here [1] is the one for the UK and here [2] is the one for Louisiana. Partially related is the fight against PornHub [3]. Here [4] is the one for Arkansas and here [5] is Canada. There is at least one more, I could not find it. I want to say it was Oklahoma. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501987 [UK] [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34262400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34262400 [Louisiana] [3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31724701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31724701 [PornHub] [4] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789752 [Arkansas] [5] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097746 [Canada]
- sneak 4y agoAt least it's possible to reconfigure the device you own to obey your own wishes and not that of the manufacturer's. Oh wait, no it's not, Apple can censor anything that an iPhone can display, and any jurisdiction Apple operates in can compel them to do such and the device owners would have no workaround.
- Animats 4y agoIt would be amusing to put in a gun recognizer, so unless you enable porn, you can't look at pictures of guns. Just to annoy Idaho.
- irrational 4y agoWhy Idaho? I thought Texas was the big gun state.
- SauciestGNU 4y agoIdaho just legalized execution by firing squad and are considering repealing their anti-militia law. Texas gets a lot of attention because of its size, but Idaho is maybe the outright craziest state almost completely controlled at the state government level by Christian/Mormon theocratic fascists.
- JohnFen 4y agoThis. Of all of the scary states, Idaho is perhaps the scariest.
- throwawaaarrgh 4y agoFuck these prudes. It's time to stop accepting the demonization of sex by religious extremists. If we don't fight for our rights we forfeit them.
- Moldoteck 4y ago[flagged]
- 4ggr0 4y agoPorn has its fair share of issues with human trafficking, exploitation etc. But to label all porn as not good is not correct either in my opinion. If, as an example, you find a porn account of a consentual couple who uploads videos on their own terms - why would that be bad?
- Gustomaximus 4y agoAlso who defines 'porn'. Is porn any photo that shows nudity, or where do you draw the line on vanilla videos vs more extreme. You might end up with devices blocking all photos of a woman topless, or naked men, even art. Does Michelangelo's David statue get his privates covered or blocked? Or like in China where they increasing block things like picture/videos of women eating bananas as that is taken as sexual (and to be fair some steamers were knowingly doing as so). Obviously there is reasonable ground in these discussions, but when it comes to censorship the best overall position is government should stay out as much as possible. History shows human nature, or the people attracted to powerful positions, seems to not play well in these spaces over time.
- SauciestGNU 4y agoThe same religious people pushing this law claim that books acknowledging the existence of queer people is pornographic. Forgive me for my cynicism but I think this is less about pornography and more about providing a legal framework for Christians to censor information about queer identities, reproductive healthcare, and things of that nature.
- inDigiNeous 4y agoWell, censoring porn is one of the things I would happy to be censoring. Although this leads down a steep road easily to censor other content also, yet for a long time I have wondered why is it so easy to find porn, and why is nobody doing anything about it ? Porn is probably one of the major addictive behavioural and thought changing things in this world currently. It takes under 3 seconds to find porn if you want it, probably from any device from anywhere around the world. Is this what humanity wants to optimize for ? Porn causes distortions in how you think about women, how you sexualize over them and what kind of thoughts you have about women generally. It is very addictive, and leaves you with an empty feeling afterwards. It can be violent, disturbing, abusive to the people involved and can cause mass scale feelings of not being enough, not being good enough to compared to the people showing you how "sex" should be had. And yet almost everybody just silently accepts that porn is okay, and nothing should be done about it. We give 5 year olds smartphones which can lead to the most disturbing porn scenes by just googling a couple of words, within a minute you could be watching somebody just abusing young women violently, and yet this is accepted. I am all for free speech and that, but I think we have a blind spot here. Probably it is because we are addicted to this as a nation, as a species. I wish the big players would decide to ban porn, or at least make it substantially harder to find it. It's just a freaking stupid idea that we give our children these devices at very young ages, and almost nobody is doing anything about filtering or limiting what kind of content is available to them in this manner. Don't you agree ?
- raincole 4y ago> Don't you agree ? No.
- rhn_mk1 4y agoBy this logic, we could decide to censor violence, religion, social media, subcultures, sugar, the study of chemistry, and perhaps coffeine. I don't think it's a blind spot. It's a deliberate decision not to be overprotective. Should it be the government's responsibility to censor anything that people easily get into with bad consequences?
- inDigiNeous 4y ago
- moi2388 4y agoThe USA is so f*cking retarded. Sure, take all the drugs and pills you want. Sure, but guns. Sure, watch all the death and violence you want. But don’t you dare look at a nipple!
- inDigiNeous 4y agoYeah the hypocrisy is really silly. You can kill, murder, maim people, but oh no better censor that butt crack showing! And yet at the same time, most of the porn industry is in the US.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoThey somehow manage to export that prudishness to other countries too.
- kergonath 4y agoAnd the porn as well…
- Barrin92 4y agoIn the TV show Hannibal they unironically had to cover a naked butt with blood to lower the age rating. This single sentence sums up just about every pathology of US culture
- moremetadata 4y ago[dead]
- alienicecream 4y ago[flagged]
- LBJsPNS 4y agoKeep your ethics in your pants.
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
- npunt 4y agoDevices having accurate ML-based content/app filters that users have control over? Great! Devices having user-controlled ability to limit certain content & experiences to certain days and times? Great! Devices having robust parental control features? Great! Devices having support system control features to help users manage their addictions, e.g. user has to ask chosen friends and support buddies to disable filters? Great! Devices having several well thought out default content filters selectable during device setup? Great! Basic legislation that requires devices to have these features? Possibly! Devices having content filters as default on? Not great! Devices being legislated to just not allow content? Yikes!
- zer00eyz 4y agoFirst amendment issues aside. Your feelings about porn aside. How many women are selling images of themselves on onlyfans for a living? What is that economic impact to a majority female population. The only number I could find is a million people create content on there.
- thiht 4y agoIf only Americans spent as much time trying to ban guns and fix their mass shootings issues as they try to police the people’s sexuality.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y agoI thought they already did censor like that. You can only see lewd stuff in a browser because they censor the fuck out their app stores. I guess this would target browsers too which is why you should be free to run your own software on a phone.
- LinuxBender 4y agoThe most a device maker should be implementing is looking for RTA headers and then checking what options the device owner/purchaser set. This is not in any way a new concept. Implement child accounts and implement checks for RTA headers. This delegates the responsibility entirely to the device owner to raise their own children and website operators to set a simple header. This would be trivial to implement on both ends. Child visits site, device prompts for device owner password, then prompts to allow the site temporarily or permanently. If a website is serving user-generated or adult content and not adding RTA headers then fine the crap out of them once the corresponding legislation is in place. There is financial incentive for governments to do this correctly and to create very simple laws and device manufacturers to implement very simple technology. This will not stop people from sexting each other. Sexting would have to be addressed in parental controls on the device as to whether or not multimedia content is allowed to be received or sent to/from the device. Obviously a device owner that does not have children would never be subject to such restrictions.
- leereeves 4y ago> If a website is serving user-generated or adult content and not adding RTA headers then fine the crap out of them How could Utah fine a website from a foreign country?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LinuxBender 4y agoI don't have a good answer for this. I guess it would be whatever would be done to handle a foreign website hosting something that is illegal in the US today. I hope the goal is not for the US to police the entire planet.