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PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 3y agoRelated, from 11 hours ago, 27 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35781637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35781637
- YPPH 3y agoPresumably they are using some form of IP address geolocation. If that's as inaccurate in the USA as it is in Australia, they're going to have problems - a lot of the time it puts me in the wrong State.
- xxs 3y agoMobile phones cannot be reliably geo-located by IP as that depends on the datacenter serving them, which can easily be out of state. Usually the only half reliable part is the country which doesn't work in Europe when it comes to roaming (it uses the host country regardless the location).
- brookst 3y agoThe law is more about intent than technical compliance. Both are important, but the most important thing is demonstrating good faith efforts to comply. It's a very different world from technology, where technical compliance is more or less the same thing as policy compliance.
- fullstop 3y agoOn websites which use geolocation to select a local store (home depot), mine are frequently several hundreds of miles away when I'm on my phone.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JKCalhoun 3y agoThat's probably fine. Perhaps the point is to make it more clear to lawmakers that you can't build a Great Salt Lake Firewall.
- Frost1x 3y agoSure you could, you could mandate providers in the state give accurate geolocation data with some sort of lookup service and standard. I'm not saying it's a good idea but providers could certainly do it. They provide the physical infrastructure, and I assume have to deal with understanding state boundaries, laws, taxes etc already on a per customer basis when it comes to near state border cases. I guess people providing wifi near the border could get complex but you could pass that responsibility to whomever owns the physical line and where it terminates. Satellite might be a little difficult. But I'm not entirely sure we should do it just because it could be done.
- wang_li 3y agoSince they just passed a law requiring real age verification, if you’re trying to make some point about firewalls you’re making the wrong point.
- Arnt 3y ago"They're going to have a problem" — for whom is that a problem? Porhub made the best reasonable effort. The ISPs supplied inaccurate data and are in the jurisdiction, but aren't required to supply anything at all AFAICT. Who has a problem?
- tiagod 3y agoUsually it's Maxmind supplying the data. They might get it from ISPs, but not necessarily.
- tivert 3y ago> Porhub made the best reasonable effort. The ISPs supplied inaccurate data and are in the jurisdiction, but aren't required to supply anything at all AFAICT. Who has a problem? Given the known problems with IP geo-location, I don't think this would count as "the best reasonable effort." Unless you interpret "reasonable" to mean "half-ass."
- Arnt 3y agoI've done geoip for a film streaming company, my job included getting the error rate low enough to satisfy the rights owners from whom the company leased content. It was a bit of work, but not really difficult. If you think Disney's happy with "half-ass", then "half-ass" is what I mean.
- doitLP 3y agoIt’s much better in the US than in Australia, where there are only a few IP exit points for the whole country. It largely has to do with ISP. My IP resolves to a few feet in front of my house.
- chefandy 3y agoMy home ISP usually resolves to within 15 miles but my mobile often resolves to NYC which is across two state borders and almost 150 miles away. If I'm looking for something at Home Depot or whatnot it always sets my store location to Manhattan. Probably good for confusing trackers.
- nahnahg 3y ago[dead]
- johnnymorgan 3y agoIn other news, VPN subscription sales explode in Utah! easy sales opportunity
- awill88 3y ago[flagged]
- thebooktocome 3y agoWhat’s weird is, from my reading of the law in question, a minor using either a VPN or a stolen ID card to access PornHub is a violation. . . for PornHub. That seems a little wonky to me.
- mumblemumble 3y agoSimilar to FOSTA-SESTA, I'd guess that de facto recriminalizing sex work is largely seen as, at an absolute minimum, a happy side effect by the bill's authors.
- ttpphd 3y agoSpot on comparison!
- Szpadel 3y agoyou can just enable the camera and show your ID and someone on the other side will check if that's you /s
- denton-scratch 3y agoFrom my reading, this is just another attempt to bypass 1st Amendment by allowing a civil suit against a porn-merchant by members of the public: if the entity imposing censorship isn't the government, then it doesn't fall foul of the 1st.
- stinos 3y agoMy guess would be: more visitors to <insert any other easily accessible porn site or download client here> from Utah?
- Eumenes 3y ago[flagged]
- marcofiset 3y agoEverybody knows that prohibition does not work. People will get their fix any other way.
- squarefoot 3y agoIt's astonishing that we must repeat again and again that when alcohol was prohibited, it was sold anyway under the counter, and among those profiting from that black market were Al Capone and other similarly nice people.
- Someone1234 3y agoPlus a bunch of people actually died from low quality or incorrectly manufactured alcohol (that isn't even a reference to when the government intentionally poisoned some). We're seeing the same problem today with fentanyl getting into other illegal drugs. Pornographic content also has an analog: If companies need to be illegitimate to provide it, then they won't be quite as picky about if the content itself was produced legally or illegally (e.g. CP and other abuse/sex trafficked originating content). Banning pornography won't make it go away, it will just make it unregulated.
- nojonestownpls 3y agoSome people will have their fix anyway, while others will find that the friction starts to change their habits away from it. Unless you believe access friction has no psychological impact at all. And the friction is going to be especially impactful if you're a young teen and haven't been hooked into it as a habit yet. I speak partially from experience, as someone from a country with a lot of porn blocked. It was super annoying at first, but I just (mostly subconsciously) shifted to written erotica and other forms of erotic media. Sexual need is of course a deep seated human need, but porn is hardly the only way to deal with it, and in fact is one of the least healthy ways. There's a lot of f'ed up erotica out there, but in the end it's still much easier to see the characters as people and remember that sex happens in the larger context of life.
- brightball 3y agoIt’s probably only a matter of time. The internet became the only place where age verification wasn’t really a thing. I’m honestly more surprised this didn’t happen 20 years ago.
- m0rissette 3y agoI don’t know about you but I still have to verify my age from time to time when certain sites ask I just have to click a button saying I am over X years old.
- remram 3y agoThat's not "verifying" on the part of the site, that's just "warning".
- ben_w 3y ago20 years ago, Microsoft Internet Explorer had settings for exactly what maximum age rating of websites you wanted to be allowed to see. I vaguely remember one of the options being "full frontal nudity". Were there separate options for sex vs. violence, or was that just my imagination?
- wesleywt 3y agoI believe it is not the responsibility of the government to police what your child is doing.
- bjt2n3904 3y ago[flagged]
- FrankyZunim 3y ago[flagged]
- bjt2n3904 3y ago[flagged]
- 0zemp2c 3y ago[flagged]
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoThis all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary, it doesn’t sound like the law actually requires checking a photo ID. They’re treating it like some maximalist regulation that it isn’t—it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users’ ages right now. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they did something.
- themitigating 3y agoFirst admendment?
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoI’m not aware of any cases holding that distribution of pornography to minors is protected speech, but I’d be happy to be educated if you have one.
- jcranmer 3y agoObscene material is not inherently protected speech, but as it's a content-based restriction, the government is still bound by strict scrutiny to narrowly tailor its laws to achieve its legitimate interest in limiting the distribution of pornography. Furthermore, the definition of obscenity (the Miller test) is actually rather narrow, and there are likely to be several sexual fetishes that don't actually qualify as obscene, and therefore protected speech.
- themitigating 3y agoWhy?
- NotYourLawyer 3y agoWhy what? Try posting a comment with more than a word or two if you want a meaningful discussion.
- wunderland 3y agoThe US is also planning a law that would make it illegal to use VPNs to skirt laws like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban-bill-criminalize-vpn-use-the-eff-says-its-not-impossible/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban...
- GalenErso 3y agoThere are countless programmers, from self taught amateurs to professional SWEs, white hats, grey hats and black hats, who would immediately jump at the opportunity to create stronger VPNs, mirror sites, Tor nodes, and other tools to allow the public to bypass these restrictions. Trying to control the Internet in America is a losing proposition, for better or worse.
- marvin 3y agoThat is a consolation, but only a small one when the state violence apparatus is standing by to punish those who use them. It must never be illegal in the first place.
- Thiez 3y agoYou're proposing a technical solution to a political problem. It doesn't work, this should be fixed at the source.
- throwaway60607 3y agoHow exactly it doesn't work? Not even China has been able to make their Great Firewall resilient to stuff like VPNs.
- rbanffy 3y agoA block doesn't need to be completely effective as to prevent violations - all it needs is to provide enough data to authorities so they can make sure you don't do it too often.
- rain1 3y agothanks for clarifying that "pornhub" is an adult website
- Mashimo 3y agoNo problem, mate.
- wesleywt 3y ago[flagged]
- myrryr 3y agogiven all the other places where it has been tried. "poorly" is the likely answer.
- ipunchghosts 3y agocan you give examples? genuinely curios
- ben_w 3y agoTangential question: given the Cold War memes of the "red scare" and "better dead than red", how/why did the Republican Party decide to keep that colour scheme? I mean, if even the British Royal Family had to change its name from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor…
- ghastmaster 3y ago> how/why did the Republican Party decide to keep that colour scheme? According to the Tampa Bay Times, the colors are fairly recent and largely a result of media depictions of electoral maps. It is not an official choice by the party. https://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/visualarts/the-origins-of-red-and-blue-as-political-colors-for-republicans-democrats/2289998/ https://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/visualarts/the-origins...
- delecti 3y agoI can't vouch for it's accuracy, but it seems that the association of red/blue with republicans/democrats was only solidified in the 2000 election. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Republican-party-choose-red-the-color-of-communism https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Republican-party-choose-re... I'm also seeing a variety of results saying that prior to that, the incumbent party was typically shown as blue on graphics, and the challenging party was red. In 2000, those colors lined up with the current party associations (Gore being a dem like Clinton), and that election cycle was a publicized enough election that the colors stuck to the parties.
- Simulacra 3y agoIt seems most people recognize that the proliferation of easily-available porn has been a detriment to society, but short of blocking it there has been no proposals for rectifying the situation. IMHO society seems to have just shrugged its collective shoulders about it, especially about kids watching porn and the greater availability of it. I guess we should get used to a future where porn is freely available to everyone, at every age, because it doesn't appear to be slowing down.
- Eisenstein 3y ago> It seems most people recognize that the proliferation of easily-available porn has been a detriment to society I have not heard of this consensus. Where can I find out about it?
- Simulacra 3y agoDo you think porn has been good for society?
- Eisenstein 3y agoIn some ways.
- loeg 3y agoI certainly don't think it has been a detriment, which was your original claimed consensus viewpoint. (You have since moved the goalposts).
- int_19h 3y agoProbably. I suspect that quite a few people who in the past would satisfy their urges via actual physical sexual abuse find porn "good enough" to not bother, for one. Also, the average age at which teens first have sex has been rising steadily, which translates to fewer teen pregnancies etc.
- Aerbil313 3y ago[flagged]
- hgsgm 3y agoI was everyone hired porn stars to perform their disingenuous PR talking points. At least they'd look nice.
- roschdal 3y agoIn related news: The population of Salt Lake City experiences a boost in happiness, productivity and population.
- vlunkr 3y agoOr people just click the next site that shows up on Google and nothing changes.
- mkl95 3y agoSomewhere in Utah, an FBI agent giggles
- uncletaco 3y agoA whole family of them, probably. The FBI loves recruiting Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists because of those religious sects' tendency to do mission work and learn less widely used languages. I guess it didn't hurt that both shun the use of intoxicants.
- hgsgm 3y agoIs the law bad for private and secure online porn? Probably. Maybe these things just aren't compatible. Choose local organic porn.
- nemo44x 3y agoThe previous owners of PornHub smartly sold the business earlier this year. The writing is on the wall w/r/t hyper regulating the internet. Not to mention the rapid advances in video AI which will render a lot of pornography and distributors in particular as obsolete.
- PragmaticPulp 3y agoGood time to remind everyone that this is what happens when states try to push strict age verification with harsh penalties. The same thing will happen if social media websites are required to do age verification (Reddit and HN are social media under these definitions)
- deet 3y agoFor those who think this is just a Utah peculiarity, it's not. There have been attempts in Europe: - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-porn-ban-digital-economy-act https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-porn-ban-digital-economy-... - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/germany-porn-laws-age-checks https://www.wired.co.uk/article/germany-porn-laws-age-checks And its quite related to other pushes for age verification for social media services, as Utah and states like California have proposed: - https://www.axios.com/2022/09/16/california-law-websites-children-age https://www.axios.com/2022/09/16/california-law-websites-chi... Governments regardless of political affiliation and motivation seem intent on age verification, and it's easy to see where this could lead to, for better or worse, a less anonymous and more bureaucratically gated internet going forward. Whether that's good or not is the discussion we should be having.
- vlunkr 3y agoIf you’re concerned about privacy and anonymity, two huge strengths of the internet, it’s terrible.
- jfarina 3y agoCalling the internet private and anonymous is wishful thinking. Data is constantly owned, bought and sold.
- amelius 3y agoI wonder if congress has thought about what would happen if the CCP opened their wallet.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoYeah, because the internet was free to access everyone, data became the background currency and advertisers figured out how to de-anonymize everyone years ago. That ship has sailed.
- themitigating 3y agoProposed and enacted are a big difference. A single lawmaker can suggest or put forward a bill for anything. The majority voting to make it law is a huge barrier
- denton-scratch 3y agoPornhub reportedly says that rather than requiring identification, it's better to "identify users by their device" - what does that mean? If you're going to require ID, what does it matter how you acquire that ID?
- shhsshs 3y agoI am guessing something like the device knows its owner is under 18, and websites can query “is the user under 18” to disable itself.
- mminer237 3y agoSo it would be up to Google and Microsoft to verify people's IDs, tie their identities to their devices, and ensure only verified persons use a device? That sounds 1000% worse for privacy.
- dgellow 3y agoI think more like, parents can enable parental control on their kid devices? Not saying it’s a good idea, that feels ripe for abuse if you can more or less identify minors just by looking at their requests… (or via JS)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jeroenhd 3y agoGoogle already does this for Youtube due to EU legislation. They allow using a credit card to verify or using standard government ID. Then again, a 1 cent credit card validation charge isn't going to stop any kids from using the magic digits printed on their parents' cards so that system probably wouldn't hold up.
- ngngngng 3y agoPornhub is already requiring ID in Louisiana, which has a similar law. But their traffic has gone done significantly because of this. It seems to be that blocking Utah is a strategic PR move to try and make these kinds of laws unpopular. Lets blame the weirdo Mormons trying to pass strange laws. Nevermind these laws are starting to pop up around the world.
- taylodl 3y agoThe funny thing is the minors know how to use a VPN to get around this law whereas the many older users don't! So, in Utah the minors will be able to access porn and many of the adults will not! Good job Utah!
- rayiner 3y agoMaybe that was true for millennials vis-a-vis boomers. But Gen Z is far less tech savvy than millennials or Gen X. My parents couldn’t have blocked my access to anything. But my wife and I can easily do so with our kids.
- taylodl 3y agoKids have a knack for learning what they need to learn. Need a VPN to view porn? They'll get it figured out!
- theclansman 3y agoNot quite, have you not been following the news that new generations are worse with technology than the previous ones? Minors barely know how to use a computer nowadays, they only use smart phones.
- hbn 3y agoEvery third YouTube video has a pause at midroll for the host of the video to thank the sponsor, a VPN service. Smart phones can use VPNs, even iPhones. Kids know about them, and they certainly will when they see 20 second tutorials on Tiktok for how to access state-blocked sites.
- bitwize 3y agoToday's video is sponsored by NordVPN. Prevent hackers, governments, and ISPs from accessing your private data with a VPN -- or Virtual Private Network -- from NordVPN. Plus, you can access the internet from any of over 120 countries. I can't get Naruto on Netflix in the United States, but with NordVPN I just switch my country to Belarus and look, there it is!
- vlunkr 3y agoI hope these laws don’t devolve into a special internet for Utah (and maybe more red states in the future). Remember this is about social media too. This is eventually going to hit even Hacker News if the law is actually effective. Is HN going to jump through the hoops of complying with the law or just block Utah?
- nimbius 3y agofrom a programmatic standpoint i think it is both easier and more ethical to simply block utah. Im working on a python library now that should easily remove the threat of utah from the internet in most cases, and can be rapidly deployed should anyone suspect utah on their local networks or extranets. EDIT: i am told this is due to a specific law in utah and has nothing to do with the numerous well respected and certainly not crackpot theorists I subscribe to.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y agoRealistically this is what Utah wants. Only 60% of Utah residents are Mormon, but 85%+ of their elected state representatives and senators are Mormon. They are happy to force the rest of society to carve out a space "just for them", which is pretty much in line with their entire history anyway.
- vlunkr 3y agoThere are conspiracy theories that this is actually all about “anti Mormon” content on Reddit (and apparently it’s big on TikTok?) It’s a conspiracy that I could probably buy into.
- ngngngng 3y agoThanks for appropriately labeling this a conspiracy theory. As a Mormon in Utah I find this absurd, but conversations on Mormonism online are pretty tricky, so you come to expect absurd claims like that. I support this law on its face, but I also don't have an issue with laws like this keeping those that might not successfully integrate into the existing culture of Utah from moving here. I imagine there are others that probably think like me.
- theclansman 3y agoJust the fact that pornography is being taken seriously as something that's dangerous for minors is a good thing really.
- welshwelsh 3y agoWhy do you think that? I think it's a good thing for minors to have unrestricted access to porn
- e40 3y agoMy 22 year old son vehemently disagrees. And from what I've read from young men, many agree with him. When I (we?) were kids porn was Playboy or Penthouse or Hustler. Tame by comparison to today. As my son stressed with me, you can find _anything_ via the internet. Anything. ANYTHING. A developing brain can't unsee stuff and it does warp people's perceptions of what is normal. Having said that, I am deeply suspicious of any move to "protect the children" because it's always used as a cover for a move toward authoritarianism.
- Aachen 3y agoI'm not that much older than your son and had a different experience. (My youth was definitely not magazines, if that's what playboy and penthouse are supposed to refer to.) I think we'll need more than n=2 before being able to come to an informed conclusion here.
- 0zemp2c 3y ago[flagged]
- mensetmanusman 3y ago“Children, after we watch Daniel Tiger, we will watch what happens to this school teacher by all these men” There is actually a long dark history of adults abusing children by exposing/exploiting them in regards to such topics. It was rife in Germany post WW2 in certain communities, currently a huge issue in Pakistan. Child trafficking on an absolute basis is higher now than it has been. That’s just to say, people like who you are asking to seek help are numerous and unchecked behavior in this area has a dark history in humanity.
- taylodl 3y agoAn identity provider can make verified age one of the claims on an OAuth token. It removes anonymity, but at least you don't have to provide your personal details to everybody on the internet demanding age verification. You provide those details to your trusted identity provider, they provide the claim of your age to the website. With that in place we can easily make beer, liquor, marijuana and tobacco sales on the internet possible! And porn too, I guess.
- basisword 3y agoWhere are you based? I can purchase alcohol from Amazon UK with no obvious age checks. Deliveroo require that riders verify your age but in reality they just ask you to type it in. And the major grocery stores deliver alcohol without any obvious checking too. I imagine teenage drinking is much easier these days thanks to the above :)
- conro1108 3y agoIn the Bay Area I’m also easily able to order alcohol on all the big delivery services, but they all seem pretty consistent about scanning your ID for age verification before they drop it off.
- mkoryak 3y agoAbout a month ago I had my groceries delivered from Wholefoods and the deliver driver carded me for some non-alcoholic beer I had purchased. I tried explaining to him that he didn't have to do that, but he wouldn't unload my groceries until I let him scan my ID.
- _yb2s 3y agoI had this a lot during the pandemic lockdown, for groceries and takeout… things that weren’t even liquid or food were mislabeled in some database as alcohol, requiring stressful social interaction when the whole point was no contact dropoff. Crazy how people aren’t allowed to use common sense but have to follow an apps instructions.
- c2h5oh 3y agoI'm more curious HOW they are doing it. I've looked into this recently and detecting state you are in without having access to your location data had just under 50% error rate.
- gigatexal 3y agowhat are all these highest-per-capita consumers of pr0n going to do? hahahaha
- ngngngng 3y agoThat's a myth based on a single very flawed study that's 15 years old. Every study since then has Utah in close to last place for porn consumption per capita.
- gigatexal 3y agoI stand corrected, thank you: https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/2/23708030/utah-pornography-usage https://www.deseret.com/2023/5/2/23708030/utah-pornography-u...
- Nifty3929 3y agoIn the old days parents would have this responsibility. And this doesn't necessarily mean that the parents would prohibit it! But I guess if parents aren't parenting the way you want them to, you need to pass a law. (which I disagree with)
- mc32 3y agoBefore, parents oversaw things in the home and strangers/other parents extended that reach to the streets and the public square. These days parents barely have control over things at home due to how things can be circumvented, never mind outside the home. It’d be like comparing an old style police stakeout and telling everyone surveillance is no different today because it’s just the police (ignoring the part where technology changes the calculus).
- miroljub 3y agoPornhub forced to block Utah, but not Iran. One state is a democracy, the other is an undemocratic clerical state. Now, close your eyes and try to guess which is which.
- ctvo 3y ago> One state is a democracy, the other is an undemocratic clerical state. > Now, close your eyes and try to guess which is which. Utah is the democracy? Doesn't seem too tough. Their elected officials passed a law, we assume with the will of the people. You disagreeing with the law doesn't change their status as a democracy. > Pornhub forced to block Utah, but not Iran. One has enforcement mechanisms that can actually hurt Pornhub, and the other is Iran. Big ole shrug here too.
- ytreyrty 3y agoit's interesting how the biggest defenders of "democracy" always have a problem when democracy is used to implement something they dont like.
- dragonwriter 3y agoYes, its always surprising that the set of people thar believe that the populace at large should have control of policy overlaps with the set that have strong opinions about the content of policy. I mean, except that that’s really not even a little bit surprising. (Neither, really, is the fact—which seems more relevant here—that people raised in the context where liberal democracy is idealized often have trouble separating out the “liberal” and “democratic” elements of that system, and frequently confuse the construct as “democracy” and view democratic illiberalism as “undemocratic”.)
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoThe answer to your riddle is: Utah is the democracy. Plain and simple. The democratically-elected representatives of Utah are passing legislation that represents the interests of the majority of its population.
- shp0ngle 3y agoGood.
- trc001 3y agoIt seems that the better law would be to require sites carry some standardized nsfw/18+ tag or marker so they could easily be filtered by parental controls. Sites in violation could be fined if they did not include the marker. There would probably still be trivial ways to work around this (e.g. content blocker to remove the marker) but it would be no more trivial than the current vpn workaround and it would be more privacy preserving.
- woeirua 3y agoIt makes no sense to me that every physical store in a state must check IDs if you want to buy porn or alcohol, but porn websites can just let anyone in without checking ID. There are legitimate privacy concerns with checking ID online, but I think it’s way past time that the government does something to restrict the supply of porn to minors via the internet. The same with social media. The evidence that social media causes harm to minors is clear and compelling.
- mhh__ 3y agoDoes it have to be the government? Isn't this what parental controls are for
- woeirua 3y agoUtah hasn’t said what the solution has to be, just that age verification needs to take place. I think the market should find the best solution here.
- juve1996 3y agoThe market has - exiting the market is the best solution right now.
- belorn 3y agoYou do not need it to be the government to provide a protocol for identification. In Sweden they already done this by offloading it to banks, which can be seen as a benefit or drawback based on who you ask. Personally I would like to see something like letsencrypt to take the role of central identification authority, with multiple open protocols available to prove identification. Neither governments or banks should be the single source for identity. Trust is a hard problem to solve with technology, and neither government nor for-profit organizations tend to be very good at it.
- Beaver117 3y agoThere are about a gazillion porn websites and legislation only affects the top like 3 of them. Completely pointless unless you have an entire surveillance system like China's firewall
- Pxtl 3y agoNote: You can get married at 16 in Utah. So you can be married but still too young to consume pornography.
- DonHopkins 3y agoAs long as the average age of all of your wives is above 18 it's ok, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives
- ngngngng 3y agoOnly 1% of Utah practices polygamy while the Majority of Utahans are Mormon.
- shadowgovt 3y ago1% is an astonishingly high number; I had no idea.
- bick_nyers 3y agoFeature is working as intended.
- mrguyorama 3y agoInteresting to find out that Utah DOESN'T have the kind of child marriage that places like West Virginia have been in the news recently for defending.
- ngngngng 3y agoIt's not interesting if you are at all familiar with Mormons. The problem is people are only familiar with us from Under The Banner of Heaven saying we're all violent extremists or countless reality TV shows painting us all as polygamist.
- ngngngng 3y agoNote: 25 states allow marriage at 16. 8 states allow marriage even younger.
- wakannai 3y agoMultiple issues with this. It starts off with arbitrary definitions of what pornography is (https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html): "nipple of the female breast" You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you ever take a look at it again before you are married. What's wrong with these people? Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in California), so clearly, people aren't aligned at all on this subject (I'm emphasizing the arbitrary nature here). Forbid and censor the things you're afraid of educating on. This trend reminds tangentially of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority. On a closing note, I do recommend supporting organizations like https://www.aanr.com/ https://www.aanr.com/ who also provide legal help to citizens in states that'd rather have you wear a burka than show a nipple.
- Barrin92 3y ago>What's wrong with these people? someone told me once "Think of the US less like a secular Western European country and more like a very rich Iran" and that really does help to make sense of a lot of these decisions
- cpursley 3y agoWhen's the last time the US publicly executed a homosexual person or adulterer, with or without trial?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bragr 3y agoIf you include lynchings (and I am), very recently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States#Violence_against_LGBT_people_since_1969 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LG...
- 3y ago
- seanw444 3y agoWow, even HN has taken the "but think of the children" pill.
- irrational 3y agoHow do they block a state like this? Is there a directory where ip addresses can be looked up to see if they fall within these geographic boundaries? What about computers belonging to people visiting the state?
- erikpukinskis 3y agoIt’s based on IP addresses, not computers. There are “IP Geolocation” services that aggregate many different databases to try to guess where an IP address has be allocated physically. See https://whatismyipaddress.com/geolocation https://whatismyipaddress.com/geolocation
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- honkycat 3y agoPersonally, I don't think children should be watching pornography ( I know, hot take! ) However, nanny-laws like this suck and end up having a horrible blast radius for privacy and security. What happened to parents setting up content filters on cellphones and computers? Why is it the government's job to police your kids? I can't believe how far Hacker News has fallen. Now we're cool with de-anonymizing the internet? Ludicrous!
- mattpallissard 3y agoHN: "Social media, tech, and media companies are evil. regulators should do something about this!" Also HN: "How dare Utah try and regulate a pornographic media company"
- degentracker12 3y ago[flagged]
- salemh 3y ago[dead]
- seydor 3y agoMastercard and Visa have been doing the same for years now. Anyone who uploads nude photos (and this includes nudism websites) must also upload government id to the website (Not to visa/Mastercard which would be the obvious). So millions of users have uploaded multiple copies of their gov id to all kinds of websites. I m sure they are secure. This happened after some anti-sex groups went on a pr campaign. And this american pretentiousness is now imposed on everyone, worldwide.
- armatav 3y agoIt’s funny to see half of HN clutch pearls when a segment of society doesn’t want their kids addicted to digital porn. No one’s stopping you; it’s to stop kids from ramping up what might be the most societally acceptable hardcore addiction. There are elected representatives that push for these changes, this is how the society in the US is structured. If you want a different set of rules, get elected or change states.
- bobmaxup 3y agoThere are already federal regulations around this. No online entity is legally able to provide minors access to pornography. It is just the nation, as a collective, doesn't care enough to enforce it. Employing privacy eroding laws to address it via appeals to emotion seems like a slippery slope.
- TheMagicHorsey 3y agoThis law is so nonsensical. There is no way to block all the porn in the world behind "legitimate and law-abiding" porn providers. The right way to approach this problem (if you even see it as a problem) is to filter on the device. Just make content tagging mandatory and make a device level filter that can be turned on by parents and locked with a password. Done.
- cjmcqueen 3y agoWhy is it that the people following the news hosted by a company focused on entrepreneurship and start-ups is surprised and arguing how weird a region is? All markets are weird in their own way. It sounds like there's an opportunity here for someone to create (yet another?) tech company that manages this difficult problem. PornHub, gambling sites and other folks that need to verify age then pay you to do it! Laws like this are just a cost of doing business. Pass the cost of verification onto the consumers in Utah. If consumers don't like they can change the law or learn how to setup a VPN. Doesn't this solve the problem? PornHub keeps their margins and people still have their freedom. If a kid really wants to look at porn, they'll at least have to be able to fund it or learn some valuable technical skills.
- phatboyslim 3y agoPornography, social media, 24/7 news... will all be looked back on in history as having profound negative mental health effects, akin to how we today view smoking in the 1950s. There is a mountain of growing evidence that this is verifiably true. The exact means that Utah is using to provide ID check may be for debate, but the concept there should be an age restriction, liable to the ISP or the content provider, should not be in dispute.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- voltaireodactyl 3y agoWhat alternative means do you see as having the potential to be effective? Is there a version that does not require unmasking everyone just to identify the children?
- shrimpx 3y agoHow much liability should go to parents? There are myriad tools on the market for blocking porn on devices.
- Aerbil313 3y agoExactly, see https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/ https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/
- michalu 3y agoGood riddance for Utah. Evil company that ruined lives of many people both users and the "actors" Also super pathetic to be a user of this - watching pixels to fool your brain to release dopamine to get even more pleasure than what the pleaure driven economy of the first world offers 24/7 already.
- erenyeager 3y agoI think a good way to combat pornography companies is to smother them in liability problems. Absolute many children and adults have had negative externalities due to the spread of pornography in society and specially use of it on phones and in computers. It is not healthy or normal or good for so much of growing teens’ attention to be focused and spent on these deeply harmful things. I know growing up that pornography led me as a minor to engaging in sexual conversations and sending nudes to adults and other minors, helped by apps like Kik, Snapchat, Reddit, etc. absolutely these companies all need to be held more accountable for the effects of NSFW activity on their platforms.
- ytreyrty 3y agolots of porn addicts freaking out in here lmao
- Aerbil313 3y ago[flagged]
- wyldberry 3y agoWay late to this, but to me this ultimately comes down to: "How do we handle the negative externalities that access to the worlds information at our fingertips has caused?" In theory parents are responsible for general outcomes of their children. However, do you expect non-tech, and realistically, non security/networking people to have the toolset to understand how to set up their networks and their devices to block access to this content? It's already a hard problem to solve in enterprise, or at least non Gov/Defense enterprises (hello Bluecoat?). A company has no incentive to block users from their content like this unless their is a negative effect from letting someone view it who shouldn't. They say "you're the parent block it". It's almost as if a child walked into a bar and said "give me a beer" and the bartender did. Then didn't get in trouble because "the parent should have stopped it".
- gremlinsinc 3y ago> They say "you're the parent block it". It's almost as if a child walked into a bar and said "give me a beer" and the bartender did. Then didn't get in trouble because "the parent should have stopped it". no, this is more like dad bringing home beers, the kids get into it, and they try to go after the store or beer manufacturer. I mean it's still happening generally under a parents roof, likely in their own homes and I'm there's already plenty of tools out there to block shit like this, at least on WiFi and I'm sure mobile devices could also block it. This ban is more about the states' religious undertones than anything. fyi, I live in Utah and used to be Mormon.
- wyldberry 3y agoI literally sit in cybersecurty chat channels where people who know tons still cannot get the "plenty of tools" to block this to work correctly. The ones that do have spent thousands on equipment and monitoring capabilities. You don't even come in with examples of how to do it properly, let alone for non-swe/network engineer/ families to do it. Just hand-waving away "i'm sure mobile devices could". It's nothing like a parent bringing home the beers. In order to participate in education and social life your kids need access to the internet and devices. You parents are giving you a tool to do a job that comes with a negative externality of being able to access adult websites (and anything else on the internet). It's not ridiculous for parents to vote for representatives who will put legal blocks in place to force a change since there's no way to vote with your dollar here, even if the source is religion where making children is a core tenant. I'm very familiar with living with LDS. I'm in Idaho.
- dragonwriter 3y agoAnd the impacts are being seen: (time sensitive link) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=vpn&date=now%201-d&geo=US&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=vpn&date=now%201-...
- bart_spoon 3y agoI don’t know if the legislation here is misguided or not, but I do find it fascinating the number of users who, whenever a thread focused on the potential dangers of pornography (or violent media content) pops up, insist that it’s completely harmless and there is no way it could have an affect on people’s behaviors or personalities. Advertising is close to a $1T industry. Many people here work for some of the most powerful corporations in the world, whose empires are built on advertising. The content we see and hear affects us. I think we would be wise to treat all kinds of media consumption, particularly novel forms such as the unlimited access to limitless amounts of porn at the touch of a button which has only been widely available 20 years at best, with some hesitancy and skepticism before we declare it as perfectly harmless.
- notjoemama 3y agoJust mentioning, this post at the time of my comment, has 856 comments. That's roughly 3 times the next highest post at this moment, and at least 8 times the average, and I'm being generous. In short, hacker news users have quite a bit to say about porn on the internet, while another "popular" post about Google's DeepMind CEO's belief about impending general artificial intelligence remains at 35 comments. lol Stay classy HN users. :p
- E39M5S62 3y agoWhat's the purpose of this comment, other than as an attempt to shame people for discussing a normal topic?
- notjoemama 3y agoI found it humerous and shared my observation thinking others might enjoy it. Why was your initial observation about shame?
- freedomben 3y agoRelated: Searches for VPN Soar in Utah Amidst Pornhub Blockage (culturalcurrents.institute) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35807408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35807408