10 ms·

E621, Pornhub, and others block North Carolina residents

133 points by lilboiluvr69 3y ago

i8comments 3y ago
[flagged]
- TriangleEdge 3y ago
  Pornhub is one of the most visited websites on earth [1]. So, my question to this comment is how do you define value in this case? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    Heroin and fentanyl are used by many and generate a ton of money and they are still of negative value to society. Usage and ability to generate money have nothing to do with value to humanity.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Ooh, don't say that too loud, you're going to embarrass angel investors. ;)
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  That's no way to talk about people from North Carolina.
mc32 3y ago
Ignoring other (obvious) issues, it’ll be interesting to see how people respond. Do they seek different entertainment? Does it lead to more or less socially desirable/adjusted behavior?
- userbinator 3y ago
  They will quickly learn what VPNs are.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    Or just discovery slightly sketchier websites that don't operate in the US...
- lwhalen 3y ago
  The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
- thinkerswell 3y ago
  Generally you get more of what you subsidize, so my bet is that this will lead to less porn consumption, an absolutely massive win.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    You don't get less of what you prohibit, though. Lots of prohibited things just get swept under the rug, and in turn, become more extreme.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    > my bet is that this will lead to less porn consumption, an absolutely massive win. I'd take you up on it, but there's absolutely no way to accurately measure this.
  - Kamq 3y ago
    Given that access to porn is strongly negatively correlated with violent rape across most cultures I've seen studied, I'm not sure you should be cheering this.
    - owenpalmer 3y ago
      How do you know this is true?
coldnose 3y ago
E621 isn’t even mentioned in the article, but of course it comes before pornhub in the title on HN X3
- userbinator 3y ago
  I'm perplexed that someone would name a pornographic site with the same name as a very popular food additive.
  - sdflhasjd 3y ago
    E621 - Monosodium glutamate (MSG), Flavour enhancer.
  - itishappy 3y ago
    Great, now I am too. Thanks. Forgive me ad-sense recommendations, but I'm going in. Looks like it's unconfirmed but likely it was specifically named for monosodium glutamate. "This is where we keep the tasty content." https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/E621 https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/E621 https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/e621/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/e621/ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/e621 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/e621 (Edit: Apparently there's a sister site called E926 to share SFW content. E926 is yet another food additive (Chlorine Dioxide) which is used to bleach food for a cleaner appearance.)
- falcor84 3y ago
  As someone who considers himself a relatively informed netizen, I hadn't even heard of e621.net until now, and I don't know whether I should be proud or ashamed of that.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    E621 is probably the best porn site on the internet tbh. I’ve never seen a site so well organised and searchable.
    - bluefinity 3y ago
Laaas 3y ago
What would the legal consequences be for PornHub if they ignored the law and didn't (and perhaps don't) have any physical or commercial presence in North Carolina, beyond the website being available?
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Not much. But it would be problematic for them if they ever have business dealings there.
- jm20 3y ago
  They sell an online subscription. Some states consider there to be a nexus if you’re selling to residents in the state. NC doesn’t tax digital software, so that would complicate things, but it wouldn’t be as cut and dry as “we don’t have a physical presence there.” Fighting the government, even if you’re right, is very expensive.
silisili 3y ago
How do sites that have porn but not their main purpose respond, or do they have to? Reddit and Twitter come to mind, I've stumbled across a lot of weird stuff on both.
- dvngnt_ 3y ago
  i think they don't want to respond as to avoid being the crosshairs. i'm surprised that the app stores let them on though since it isn't that hard to view it
- samstave 3y ago
  Reddit had a lot of dark subs and users for a very long time, and they kinda just swept it all under the rug. /r/spaced*cks, ViolentaCruz, others I cant recall, and the infamous /r/cannibals controversy with a reddit founder and CEO. Yeah, weird times - not its many bots - and interestingly, in the last year, a boatload of .in India subreddits for various aspects of their culture (like IdianMotorcycles, Weird train behavior, their version of /r/idiotsincars, lot of bollywood and movie and celeb gossip subs. Maybe need a comment filter that hides anything that a non-sequitur or perhaps comments that have < (N) syllables, words or sentences?
  - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
    Fuck Spez. He's a cannibal???
  - whstl 3y ago
    > "movie and celeb gossip subs" I haven't come across the Indian version of this, but the default page (I don't have an account) now has a lot of posts from celebrity gossip subs, and the viciousness and hatred there is worse than what I saw in radical politics subs, or even 4chan. At least the porn and NSFW stuff was hidden. This actually what made me block Reddit from my devices.
    - samstave 3y ago
      I only browse /r/all any longer - with no account after admin fraud killing mods for policy gain... and I have a good filter-out list in RES, but yeah, .in domain submissions have spiked in the last year+ Would be cool for a toggle in prefs/RES to only include certain domain tLDs/blacklist certain TLDs -- like maybe one doesnt want to see .cn, .in, .ir, .[STRING] ? Regardless, granularity over feed is still tedious in /r/ and RES is still a slow solution. You can edit RES files, but avg reddit viewer (Anyone who does Not use old.reddit) just get the same crappy 'modern' UX. I wonder about engagement times on old.reddit vs www.reddit get - I cant even look at https://www.reddit https://www.reddit - but thats due to me customizing me data density to my view. https://i.imgur.com/XKMfMJO.png https://i.imgur.com/XKMfMJO.png https://i.imgur.com/MLnUEPc.png https://i.imgur.com/MLnUEPc.png --- Reddit should be ground/target|zero for sentiment/mind-mining (will never forget in an interview with Twitter when they were still on (howard) (near the AT&T spy room) -- Question: "What do you think Twitter is?" ME: "You are a global sentiment engine" They did not like that comment... and asked me what physical publications I read to keep up on networking/DC Design/etc... (Which I thought was ironic, except for seeing what publications they could exploit - but the truth was they wanted to usurp sentiment+discourse... (Succeeded) (similar with google interview (2006) "what would you say we do around here?" -- >>"Everyone thinks you're a search engine - but you're just an advertising company"
mjevans 3y ago
What if you had to show Government ID whenever you entered a grocery store, a library, a movie theater? What if you were tracked each time you consumed a video, a still image, an audio clip, or even a text message? What if the government kept a record of any or all of those checks? What if they arranged for third parties to commercialize that data so they could 'legally' end-run any restriction on domestic spying with a small ad targeting data service fee? This is the sort of dystopia that librarians and others focused on liberty have been fighting for what seems like forever.
- hulitu 3y ago
  > What if you were tracked each time you consumed a video, a still image, an audio clip, or even a text message? You already are.
  - koonsolo 3y ago
    And I would say if you carry a cellphone, they also know where you go physically.
- slibhb 3y ago
  If you extend this policy to "consuming a video/image/text message," that would be dystopian. But this is about porn. Maybe it'll be a slippery slope but I doubt it. I wouldn't vote for this policy but I get it. Lots of people don't want kids watching porn. And it's not just social conservativism, people across the political spectrum think porn is addictive, psychologically damaging, and leads to sexual dysfunction.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > If you extend this policy to "consuming a video/image/text message," that would be dystopian. But this is about porn Eho decides what is porn? There is portln on Twitter, will all of twitter be monitored? Kids suicides inceased 10x because they arent alliwed to go outside any more and have no friends - if we actually cared about kuds we'd be solving that. Western boomers grew up in a better world than kids today “Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children & teens to play, roam, & engage in other activities independent of direct oversight & control by adults.” license to walk home alone from school dropped from 86% in 1971 to 35% in 1990 and 25% in 2010, and license to use public buses alone dropped from 48% in 1971 to 15% in 1990 to 12% in 2010.11 Homework, which was once rare or nonexistent in elementary school, is now common even in kindergarten. One study revealed that the average amount of time that US children in school, ages 6-8 years, spent at school plus school homework increased by 11.4 hours per week between 1981 and 2003, equivalent to adding a day and half to an adult’s work week. those who could play freely in neighborhoods spent, on average, twice as much time outdoors, were much more active while outdoors, had more than twice as many friends, and had better motor and social skills than those deprived of such play"
digitalsushi 3y ago
It would only affect local businesses advertising on G-rated websites in porn-banned states if porn viewers in their state found it easier to just leave the VPN running all the time. Is this a reasonable point?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pleoxy 3y ago
What is that, 48 more states to go?
whatshisface 3y ago
>Officials explained that companies will be able to use commercially available databases to verify that users are old enough to access their content. What?
hknmtt 3y ago
> Officials explained that companies will be able to use commercially available databases to verify that users are old enough to access their content. The new law will take effect starting January 1st. ಠ_ಠ
nostromo 3y ago
Wow, this moronic bill passed nearly unanimously. It's nice to see bipartisanship on display in North Carolina when it comes to the stupidest ideas. > Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall... That's a ridiculously vague standard. Google and Bing both distribute material harmful to minors in "substantial" quantities... I hope it gets thrown out on judicial overview.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Perhaps its an example of horseshoe theory? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory US State legislators tend to be more politically extreme these days, AFAIK. Or just good old "save the children," I guess? Where either party is afraid to make themselves look bad.
  - schneems 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > yes “I want to be governed by a fascist dictator” and “maybe we shouldn’t destroy the environment completely” are pretty close Eh, the American far left and right are both obsessed with policing language in surprisingly-similar ways. The left’s inability to cohere is largely what protects us from it meaningfully mobilising.
      - npteljes 3y ago
        >The left’s inability to cohere is largely what protects us I think that's a feature of democracy, which I actually like. Unfortunately it's also what gives a charismatic populist more power. They will unify the people with the (artificially amplified) emotions, while the others are mired in argument.
egypturnash 3y ago
This news article on a Fox affiliate site only mentions Pornhub. Did this originally link elsewhere? edit: e621 is certainly doing this; this is from their front page right now: Dec 31st: Due to the current legal situation in North Carolina and the uncertainty surrounding it, we will be blocking access to e621.net from North Carolina until we can consult with our legal counsel on this matter. We did not come to this decision lightly and we will do what we can, as we can, to rectify and remedy this situation so that we can restore access to those users that are affected by this matter. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and will have an update as soon as possible.
- lilboiluvr69 3y ago
  No, I just don't care about PornHub personally.
insickness 3y ago
I'm in Virginia and these sites are also being blocked. On Pornhub: > As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our...
JasonFruit 3y ago
[flagged]
- npteljes 3y ago
  It does exist, it's very popular, and people won't let go, just because the gummint says so. So, the prohibited thing will go underground. It gets more extreme, organized criminal activity will increase, people's trust in others and in the establishment weakens. That I'd definitely call a blight on society. Now, which blight we pick is the question. Doing the harmful thing in the open, in controlled ways, or doing it in the dark, in uncontrolled ways? I don't think the latter has much success, if a generally nicer society is the goal.
- lilboiluvr69 3y ago
  I am going to say something that is not popular to say but has been on my mind for a while. Why is it bad for our kids to see two humans have sex? When you say porn is bad for kids, I think you mean that mainstream porn can be misogynistic, addictive (like most pleasurable things), and give people unrealistic body standards and expectations about what sex is like. All of which I agree with. Okay, so, if I had a website that just showed consensual sexual relationships between a husband and wife in a committed relationship, just doing normal sex like people do, would that be okay for kids to see? Would it be okay for me to show my kid if they were curious about what sex was like? What if that was something I /wanted/ my teenager to jerk off to as opposed to something I wasn't curating? Wouldn't it be better for me to be able to say "Here's what normal human sex looks like, you'll experience this yourself when you're older and ready for it, but I was a young teen and I know young teens get horny too, just don't spend all day masturbating to it" rather than letting them stumble onto whatever they find on PornHub? I mean we educate kids about every other aspect of human existence, but sexuality is some weird taboo... I'm just confused here, I mean, are we saying that young people are irreparably harmed by visual exposure to the human reproductive system? If so, why would we as a species have evolved that way? And if not, then how can we justify a blanket ban on young people seeing all forms of recorded sexual activity? If you look at my comment history you'll see I'm not a normal person, and I don't really understand 'normal' views on human sexuality. Maybe it's because I lived so long in a clothing optional community...I don't really understand why it's okay for parents to show their kids extremely violent media but showing two people having sex, even if it's educational, is considered some form of abuse. But then again, as I said, maybe I'm just mentally ill or something...
tzs 3y ago
Note that they do not object to age verification. They object to the specific way North Carolina is requiring it to be done: > Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults. > Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws Using modern cryptographic techniques (such as blind signatures or zero-knowledge proofs) it is possible to design a system whereby you can prove your age to porn site P without P receiving any information they did not already have other than that you are older than their age threshold. In particular this would even work for anonymous users. There would be another site V involved in the verification. You would have to give V your real identity and show them your proof of age documents, but V would not get any information about what site you trying to get verified for. If V were a site that already has your real identity then using V for age verification would not be giving them anything that they didn't already have. It might be possible for someone who obtains records of both P and V to get an idea of the real identities of porn site account owners by trying to match up the timing. This risk can be greatly reduced by having just one or two V sites, so that they are high traffic, and by having some random delays in the verification protocol. That way someone trying to figure out if I was using say Pornhub might find out from V that I was doing the V side of a verification at say 2024-06-01 01:44:21, and they might be able to find out from Pornhub if they had any verifications using V that started within a few minutes before that and completed within a few minutes after that. But with only one or two V sites, there will be way more verifications that happened at V at times compatible with those Pornhub verifications. They would not be able to tell if mine at 2024-06-01 01:44:21 is one of those Pornhub ones or one of the many more going on around that time for other sites. It is a little counterintuitive, but the more sites that require age verification the better the privacy protection, and the fewer the number of V sites, the better the privacy protection. That suggests that if we are going to require some sites to do age verification, to do it in the most privacy preserving way (1) it should be done nationally rather than as a patchwork of state verification laws, and (2) V should be a government site.
nimbius 3y ago
From a political standpoint its sort of wild the bills principal sponsor --Amy Galey-- mentions absolutely nothing of it in her 2024 campaign site. You'd imagine championing child safety would be at the top of your list of achievements. nope. parenting and nutrition. https://amygaley.com/#issues https://amygaley.com/#issues this was clearly meant to be a political stunt leading into the 2024 election year to make the democratic governor Roy Cooper appear as though he didnt care about children. No respectable republican voter would ever dream of submitting to a government database for something like this. Cooper called the bluff, as did most of the minority Democratic legislature in the house and senate. i doubt this law will survive past the second quarter of 2024.
owenpalmer 3y ago
To those opposing this, do you think porn is harmful to children? Porn is a digital drug, how else do you propose solving this problem? I'm a bit confused as to why someone would want children to have access to porn...
- lilboiluvr69 3y ago
  I think it depends on the porn in question. Would I be upset if I discovered my teenage son had some playboys stashed in his room? Probably not, no. People are upset about the privacy and free speech aspects of this law, as well as the annoyance of having to hand over your personal information for something as basic to human nature as your sexuality. I think there's a 100% chance that there will be a data breach at some point and a bunch of people will have their porn habits leaked to the web. Not to mention the chilling effects when it comes to something like looking up more taboo kinks and not wanting your ID associated with that. It's not just porn. I'm a member of the furry fandom. I regularly publish fiction in that community, I have life long friends in that community, it's a community that has helped me through a lot of dark places in my life, a community where I can explore taboo subjects in a safe setting. For most people it may just be 'porn', material they use to jerk off, but the fandom is a major part of my life. E621 and other sites aren't even necessarily 'pornographic', I rarely look at 'furry porn' to masturbate as a matter of fact. I'm being 100% honest when I say I follow the artists I follow for the art. It's just that in the furry fandom things like depicting sexuality aren't necessarily taboo. Preventing other people from participating in this community, whether it's fear that their identity is going to be leaked correlated to their fursona, concern over increased tracking of possibly undesired sexual minorities, or just the pain in the ass required to take that first plunge and sign up for E6, feels like an attack on a major part of my life. And personally, I don't feel like I should have to take responsibility for some parent who freaks out every time their kid sees breasts, but isn't willing to install parental controls on their fucking computer.
frank_bb 3y ago
[dead]

133 points by lilboiluvr69 3y ago

i8comments 3y ago

[flagged]

TriangleEdge 3y ago
Pornhub is one of the most visited websites on earth [1]. So, my question to this comment is how do you define value in this case? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites
- brigadier132 3y ago
  Heroin and fentanyl are used by many and generate a ton of money and they are still of negative value to society. Usage and ability to generate money have nothing to do with value to humanity.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Ooh, don't say that too loud, you're going to embarrass angel investors. ;)
anigbrowl 3y ago
That's no way to talk about people from North Carolina.

mc32 3y ago

Ignoring other (obvious) issues, it’ll be interesting to see how people respond. Do they seek different entertainment? Does it lead to more or less socially desirable/adjusted behavior?

userbinator 3y ago
They will quickly learn what VPNs are.
- TylerE 3y ago
  Or just discovery slightly sketchier websites that don't operate in the US...
lwhalen 3y ago
The internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
thinkerswell 3y ago
Generally you get more of what you subsidize, so my bet is that this will lead to less porn consumption, an absolutely massive win.
- npteljes 3y ago
  You don't get less of what you prohibit, though. Lots of prohibited things just get swept under the rug, and in turn, become more extreme.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > my bet is that this will lead to less porn consumption, an absolutely massive win. I'd take you up on it, but there's absolutely no way to accurately measure this.
- Kamq 3y ago
  Given that access to porn is strongly negatively correlated with violent rape across most cultures I've seen studied, I'm not sure you should be cheering this.
  - owenpalmer 3y ago
    How do you know this is true?

coldnose 3y ago

E621 isn’t even mentioned in the article, but of course it comes before pornhub in the title on HN X3

userbinator 3y ago
I'm perplexed that someone would name a pornographic site with the same name as a very popular food additive.
- sdflhasjd 3y ago
  E621 - Monosodium glutamate (MSG), Flavour enhancer.
- itishappy 3y ago
  Great, now I am too. Thanks. Forgive me ad-sense recommendations, but I'm going in. Looks like it's unconfirmed but likely it was specifically named for monosodium glutamate. "This is where we keep the tasty content." https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/E621 https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/E621 https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/e621/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/e621/ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/e621 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/e621 (Edit: Apparently there's a sister site called E926 to share SFW content. E926 is yet another food additive (Chlorine Dioxide) which is used to bleach food for a cleaner appearance.)
falcor84 3y ago
As someone who considers himself a relatively informed netizen, I hadn't even heard of e621.net until now, and I don't know whether I should be proud or ashamed of that.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  E621 is probably the best porn site on the internet tbh. I’ve never seen a site so well organised and searchable.
  - bluefinity 3y ago

Laaas 3y ago

What would the legal consequences be for PornHub if they ignored the law and didn't (and perhaps don't) have any physical or commercial presence in North Carolina, beyond the website being available?

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
Not much. But it would be problematic for them if they ever have business dealings there.
jm20 3y ago
They sell an online subscription. Some states consider there to be a nexus if you’re selling to residents in the state. NC doesn’t tax digital software, so that would complicate things, but it wouldn’t be as cut and dry as “we don’t have a physical presence there.” Fighting the government, even if you’re right, is very expensive.

silisili 3y ago

How do sites that have porn but not their main purpose respond, or do they have to? Reddit and Twitter come to mind, I've stumbled across a lot of weird stuff on both.

dvngnt_ 3y ago
i think they don't want to respond as to avoid being the crosshairs. i'm surprised that the app stores let them on though since it isn't that hard to view it
samstave 3y ago
Reddit had a lot of dark subs and users for a very long time, and they kinda just swept it all under the rug. /r/spaced*cks, ViolentaCruz, others I cant recall, and the infamous /r/cannibals controversy with a reddit founder and CEO. Yeah, weird times - not its many bots - and interestingly, in the last year, a boatload of .in India subreddits for various aspects of their culture (like IdianMotorcycles, Weird train behavior, their version of /r/idiotsincars, lot of bollywood and movie and celeb gossip subs. Maybe need a comment filter that hides anything that a non-sequitur or perhaps comments that have < (N) syllables, words or sentences?
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  Fuck Spez. He's a cannibal???
- whstl 3y ago
  > "movie and celeb gossip subs" I haven't come across the Indian version of this, but the default page (I don't have an account) now has a lot of posts from celebrity gossip subs, and the viciousness and hatred there is worse than what I saw in radical politics subs, or even 4chan. At least the porn and NSFW stuff was hidden. This actually what made me block Reddit from my devices.
  - samstave 3y ago
    I only browse /r/all any longer - with no account after admin fraud killing mods for policy gain... and I have a good filter-out list in RES, but yeah, .in domain submissions have spiked in the last year+ Would be cool for a toggle in prefs/RES to only include certain domain tLDs/blacklist certain TLDs -- like maybe one doesnt want to see .cn, .in, .ir, .[STRING] ? Regardless, granularity over feed is still tedious in /r/ and RES is still a slow solution. You can edit RES files, but avg reddit viewer (Anyone who does Not use old.reddit) just get the same crappy 'modern' UX. I wonder about engagement times on old.reddit vs www.reddit get - I cant even look at https://www.reddit https://www.reddit - but thats due to me customizing me data density to my view. https://i.imgur.com/XKMfMJO.png https://i.imgur.com/XKMfMJO.png https://i.imgur.com/MLnUEPc.png https://i.imgur.com/MLnUEPc.png --- Reddit should be ground/target|zero for sentiment/mind-mining (will never forget in an interview with Twitter when they were still on (howard) (near the AT&T spy room) -- Question: "What do you think Twitter is?" ME: "You are a global sentiment engine" They did not like that comment... and asked me what physical publications I read to keep up on networking/DC Design/etc... (Which I thought was ironic, except for seeing what publications they could exploit - but the truth was they wanted to usurp sentiment+discourse... (Succeeded) (similar with google interview (2006) "what would you say we do around here?" -- >>"Everyone thinks you're a search engine - but you're just an advertising company"

mjevans 3y ago

What if you had to show Government ID whenever you entered a grocery store, a library, a movie theater? What if you were tracked each time you consumed a video, a still image, an audio clip, or even a text message? What if the government kept a record of any or all of those checks? What if they arranged for third parties to commercialize that data so they could 'legally' end-run any restriction on domestic spying with a small ad targeting data service fee? This is the sort of dystopia that librarians and others focused on liberty have been fighting for what seems like forever.

hulitu 3y ago
> What if you were tracked each time you consumed a video, a still image, an audio clip, or even a text message? You already are.
- koonsolo 3y ago
  And I would say if you carry a cellphone, they also know where you go physically.
slibhb 3y ago
If you extend this policy to "consuming a video/image/text message," that would be dystopian. But this is about porn. Maybe it'll be a slippery slope but I doubt it. I wouldn't vote for this policy but I get it. Lots of people don't want kids watching porn. And it's not just social conservativism, people across the political spectrum think porn is addictive, psychologically damaging, and leads to sexual dysfunction.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > If you extend this policy to "consuming a video/image/text message," that would be dystopian. But this is about porn Eho decides what is porn? There is portln on Twitter, will all of twitter be monitored? Kids suicides inceased 10x because they arent alliwed to go outside any more and have no friends - if we actually cared about kuds we'd be solving that. Western boomers grew up in a better world than kids today “Our thesis is that a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders is a decline over decades in opportunities for children & teens to play, roam, & engage in other activities independent of direct oversight & control by adults.” license to walk home alone from school dropped from 86% in 1971 to 35% in 1990 and 25% in 2010, and license to use public buses alone dropped from 48% in 1971 to 15% in 1990 to 12% in 2010.11 Homework, which was once rare or nonexistent in elementary school, is now common even in kindergarten. One study revealed that the average amount of time that US children in school, ages 6-8 years, spent at school plus school homework increased by 11.4 hours per week between 1981 and 2003, equivalent to adding a day and half to an adult’s work week. those who could play freely in neighborhoods spent, on average, twice as much time outdoors, were much more active while outdoors, had more than twice as many friends, and had better motor and social skills than those deprived of such play"

digitalsushi 3y ago

It would only affect local businesses advertising on G-rated websites in porn-banned states if porn viewers in their state found it easier to just leave the VPN running all the time. Is this a reasonable point?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pleoxy 3y ago

What is that, 48 more states to go?

whatshisface 3y ago

>Officials explained that companies will be able to use commercially available databases to verify that users are old enough to access their content. What?

hknmtt 3y ago

> Officials explained that companies will be able to use commercially available databases to verify that users are old enough to access their content. The new law will take effect starting January 1st. ಠ_ಠ

nostromo 3y ago

Wow, this moronic bill passed nearly unanimously. It's nice to see bipartisanship on display in North Carolina when it comes to the stupidest ideas. > Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall... That's a ridiculously vague standard. Google and Bing both distribute material harmful to minors in "substantial" quantities... I hope it gets thrown out on judicial overview.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
Perhaps its an example of horseshoe theory? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory US State legislators tend to be more politically extreme these days, AFAIK. Or just good old "save the children," I guess? Where either party is afraid to make themselves look bad.
- schneems 3y ago
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  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > yes “I want to be governed by a fascist dictator” and “maybe we shouldn’t destroy the environment completely” are pretty close Eh, the American far left and right are both obsessed with policing language in surprisingly-similar ways. The left’s inability to cohere is largely what protects us from it meaningfully mobilising.
    - npteljes 3y ago
      >The left’s inability to cohere is largely what protects us I think that's a feature of democracy, which I actually like. Unfortunately it's also what gives a charismatic populist more power. They will unify the people with the (artificially amplified) emotions, while the others are mired in argument.

egypturnash 3y ago

This news article on a Fox affiliate site only mentions Pornhub. Did this originally link elsewhere? edit: e621 is certainly doing this; this is from their front page right now: Dec 31st: Due to the current legal situation in North Carolina and the uncertainty surrounding it, we will be blocking access to e621.net from North Carolina until we can consult with our legal counsel on this matter. We did not come to this decision lightly and we will do what we can, as we can, to rectify and remedy this situation so that we can restore access to those users that are affected by this matter. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and will have an update as soon as possible.

lilboiluvr69 3y ago
No, I just don't care about PornHub personally.

insickness 3y ago

I'm in Virginia and these sites are also being blocked. On Pornhub: > As you may know, your elected officials in Virginia are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our...

JasonFruit 3y ago

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npteljes 3y ago
It does exist, it's very popular, and people won't let go, just because the gummint says so. So, the prohibited thing will go underground. It gets more extreme, organized criminal activity will increase, people's trust in others and in the establishment weakens. That I'd definitely call a blight on society. Now, which blight we pick is the question. Doing the harmful thing in the open, in controlled ways, or doing it in the dark, in uncontrolled ways? I don't think the latter has much success, if a generally nicer society is the goal.
lilboiluvr69 3y ago
I am going to say something that is not popular to say but has been on my mind for a while. Why is it bad for our kids to see two humans have sex? When you say porn is bad for kids, I think you mean that mainstream porn can be misogynistic, addictive (like most pleasurable things), and give people unrealistic body standards and expectations about what sex is like. All of which I agree with. Okay, so, if I had a website that just showed consensual sexual relationships between a husband and wife in a committed relationship, just doing normal sex like people do, would that be okay for kids to see? Would it be okay for me to show my kid if they were curious about what sex was like? What if that was something I /wanted/ my teenager to jerk off to as opposed to something I wasn't curating? Wouldn't it be better for me to be able to say "Here's what normal human sex looks like, you'll experience this yourself when you're older and ready for it, but I was a young teen and I know young teens get horny too, just don't spend all day masturbating to it" rather than letting them stumble onto whatever they find on PornHub? I mean we educate kids about every other aspect of human existence, but sexuality is some weird taboo... I'm just confused here, I mean, are we saying that young people are irreparably harmed by visual exposure to the human reproductive system? If so, why would we as a species have evolved that way? And if not, then how can we justify a blanket ban on young people seeing all forms of recorded sexual activity? If you look at my comment history you'll see I'm not a normal person, and I don't really understand 'normal' views on human sexuality. Maybe it's because I lived so long in a clothing optional community...I don't really understand why it's okay for parents to show their kids extremely violent media but showing two people having sex, even if it's educational, is considered some form of abuse. But then again, as I said, maybe I'm just mentally ill or something...

tzs 3y ago

Note that they do not object to age verification. They object to the specific way North Carolina is requiring it to be done: > Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults. > Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws Using modern cryptographic techniques (such as blind signatures or zero-knowledge proofs) it is possible to design a system whereby you can prove your age to porn site P without P receiving any information they did not already have other than that you are older than their age threshold. In particular this would even work for anonymous users. There would be another site V involved in the verification. You would have to give V your real identity and show them your proof of age documents, but V would not get any information about what site you trying to get verified for. If V were a site that already has your real identity then using V for age verification would not be giving them anything that they didn't already have. It might be possible for someone who obtains records of both P and V to get an idea of the real identities of porn site account owners by trying to match up the timing. This risk can be greatly reduced by having just one or two V sites, so that they are high traffic, and by having some random delays in the verification protocol. That way someone trying to figure out if I was using say Pornhub might find out from V that I was doing the V side of a verification at say 2024-06-01 01:44:21, and they might be able to find out from Pornhub if they had any verifications using V that started within a few minutes before that and completed within a few minutes after that. But with only one or two V sites, there will be way more verifications that happened at V at times compatible with those Pornhub verifications. They would not be able to tell if mine at 2024-06-01 01:44:21 is one of those Pornhub ones or one of the many more going on around that time for other sites. It is a little counterintuitive, but the more sites that require age verification the better the privacy protection, and the fewer the number of V sites, the better the privacy protection. That suggests that if we are going to require some sites to do age verification, to do it in the most privacy preserving way (1) it should be done nationally rather than as a patchwork of state verification laws, and (2) V should be a government site.

nimbius 3y ago

From a political standpoint its sort of wild the bills principal sponsor --Amy Galey-- mentions absolutely nothing of it in her 2024 campaign site. You'd imagine championing child safety would be at the top of your list of achievements. nope. parenting and nutrition. https://amygaley.com/#issues https://amygaley.com/#issues this was clearly meant to be a political stunt leading into the 2024 election year to make the democratic governor Roy Cooper appear as though he didnt care about children. No respectable republican voter would ever dream of submitting to a government database for something like this. Cooper called the bluff, as did most of the minority Democratic legislature in the house and senate. i doubt this law will survive past the second quarter of 2024.

owenpalmer 3y ago

To those opposing this, do you think porn is harmful to children? Porn is a digital drug, how else do you propose solving this problem? I'm a bit confused as to why someone would want children to have access to porn...

lilboiluvr69 3y ago
I think it depends on the porn in question. Would I be upset if I discovered my teenage son had some playboys stashed in his room? Probably not, no. People are upset about the privacy and free speech aspects of this law, as well as the annoyance of having to hand over your personal information for something as basic to human nature as your sexuality. I think there's a 100% chance that there will be a data breach at some point and a bunch of people will have their porn habits leaked to the web. Not to mention the chilling effects when it comes to something like looking up more taboo kinks and not wanting your ID associated with that. It's not just porn. I'm a member of the furry fandom. I regularly publish fiction in that community, I have life long friends in that community, it's a community that has helped me through a lot of dark places in my life, a community where I can explore taboo subjects in a safe setting. For most people it may just be 'porn', material they use to jerk off, but the fandom is a major part of my life. E621 and other sites aren't even necessarily 'pornographic', I rarely look at 'furry porn' to masturbate as a matter of fact. I'm being 100% honest when I say I follow the artists I follow for the art. It's just that in the furry fandom things like depicting sexuality aren't necessarily taboo. Preventing other people from participating in this community, whether it's fear that their identity is going to be leaked correlated to their fursona, concern over increased tracking of possibly undesired sexual minorities, or just the pain in the ass required to take that first plunge and sign up for E6, feels like an attack on a major part of my life. And personally, I don't feel like I should have to take responsibility for some parent who freaks out every time their kid sees breasts, but isn't willing to install parental controls on their fucking computer.

frank_bb 3y ago

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