7 ms·

Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

55 points by perihelions 2y ago

skhunted 2y ago
[flagged]
- dudul 2y ago
  Strawman. PornHub doesn't argue against age verification, it criticizes the poorly designed implementation. Showing my ID at the liquor store to buy alcohol is not comparable to having to put my ID and PII in a poorly secured database. Databases that get breached again and again with virtually no consequences for the owner.
  - dwighttk 2y ago
    >Databases that get breached again and again with virtually no consequences for the owner. Pornhub is gonna have a hard time using ”our database is gonna be hacked” as an argument.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Veliladon 2y ago
    Sadly this is a feature not a bug for the lawmakers who wrote the laws. They want databases of PII to be breached in order for porn consumers to be publicly named and shamed without the political blowback or getting their hands dirty.
    - rescripting 2y ago
      The first thing that would happen is that the breach would be scoured for politicians names. They’d be just as vulnerable to this kind of blow back.
      - nashashmi 2y ago
        I’m sure they are thinking of certain colleagues to expose. That is why they passed the law. The kinds that could be threatened into compliance with rank and file. And future congressmen too. Jeffrey Epstein was known for playing with this kind of power.
      - affinepplan 2y ago
        I suspect that scouring would find approximately 535 congressmen and 200 million americans. seriously, how much "blow back" could there possibly be to revealing someone has frequented PH?
        Izkata 2y ago
        The question isn't so much does a person look at porn, it's more what porn do they like. If pornhub is storing the personal information, it could be matched to specific videos, which if it's at all fetish-specific could be blackmail material.
      - lucianbr 2y ago
        So for example if you were known to have paid for sex with a porn star, your political career would definitely be over. Right? Or how it never turns out that politicians who pushed for persecution of gays are gay themselves. Ever.
    - urtuti 2y ago
      Same with prostitution and Nordic model. Porn is a bad thing, we ban it by prosecuting consumers.
  - sudden_dystopia 2y ago
    Do you really think they give a damn about privacy? If they care so much about privacy, wouldn’t they also be proclaiming how their website doesn’t track you and gobble identifying data? Or is it they are just hiding behind that argument because it sounds noble and their real concern is a business one? Also, how secure do you think the state systems are that provide those ID’s?
  - skhunted 2y ago
    Pornhub could have implemented age verification a long time ago and didn’t. It didn’t suggest such a thing despite knowing underage kids were viewing their content. Now they try to act all reasonable. They aren’t a victim in this. They waited until a political solution was imposed to propose reasonable steps to combat the problem. I’m all for reasonable solutions and don’t know the best way forward. I do know there is a problem with kids viewing content on these sites and I do know that these sites don’t care about that because none of them ever tried to do anything to prevent this.
- Veliladon 2y ago
  They're not saying age verification is wrong, but dozens of skeezy sites taking in personally identifiable information who should have no business in taking in personally identifiable information is a bad idea. Pornhub advocate for devices to do authentication of ID (i.e. Apple has FaceID and a bunch of stuff for reading IDs already as part of their digital ID initiative) and then attesting the user is of age. This could remain entirely anonymous and more secure than a kid inputting his dad's drivers license number that he stole from the dad's wallet.
  - shsbsbsks 2y ago
    [dead]
  - skhunted 2y ago
    Sure, that’s reasonable. Let’s implement this. In fact Pornhub could have implemented this on its own and staved off the “need” for a government imposed solution. It knew there was a problem and did nothing.
    - nhinck3 2y ago
      What problem?
      - skhunted 2y ago
        Obviously children viewing hardcore porn on Pornhub’s sites.
        nhinck3 2y ago
        Do you have any evidence that this was a problem?
        skhunted 2y ago
        Providing access to hardcore porn to people regardless of their age is a problem.
- nhinck3 2y ago
  Typically because there are incredibly poor laws around retention and use of private information collections and I typically loathe having any company retain my personal information without a really good reason (and this isn't a good reason).
- globular-toast 2y ago
  According to TFA they don't oppose age verification, they oppose the required method of age verification, namely submitting personal information and IDs. They say they would support secure verification, I guess like having a digital signature from an authority, like the government. I wonder if PornHub is doing anything to help this happen, though. I doubt it...
  - skhunted 2y ago
    They do oppose age verification because despite knowing there was a problem of underage people viewing their content they did nothing to stop this. Now a government solution has been imposed they are acting as if they are now some how a responsible business. I don’t know the answers or the right way to implement things but age verification is not an unreasonable requirement.
- Tao3300 2y ago
  Maybe you're right, but in the real world I'm already getting multiple letters a year from companies that have my PII and have had an unexpected breach. The issue isn't policy, it's implementation.
- nope1000 2y ago
  Verification maybe? I don't like the idea that a porn website could tie my real identity to the watch history (I assume you have to be logged in once you verified) and sell that to whomever.
- noodlesUK 2y ago
  That's a potentially reasonable argument, however there are a couple of issues mapping from the physical precedent to the digital world. In the physical world you would show your ID to the store clerk, or (more likely) not even be asked for ID at all if you were sufficiently old-looking. In the digital world, everyone has to show proof of age, as there's no quick sanity check. Further, none of these states have a privacy preserving way of demonstrating age. All of them require either passing payment details or identity details to an intermediary or the website. The recipient of the identity then gets to hold onto whatever details you provided for the rest of time, and may use them for stuff like ad targeting. This is in an industry that is well-reputed for being scammy.
- nashashmi 2y ago
  No one wants to give their ID card and real name for despicable things like this. Even the show people in the industry cover their faces
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    > No one Hahaha, you would be shocked.
- watwut 2y ago
  No one is putting my name and date of birth into any database when I am buying alcohol.
  - rascul 2y ago
    I've found some places require an ID scan to sell alcohol. No exceptions even if you're obviously 65 years old.
- Broken_Hippo 2y ago
  I literally cannot remember the last time I had to show proof of age to buy tobacco or alcohol. I'm middle aged - mid 40s, in fact - and places don't ask. If I order alcohol, the reason I'm showing ID is to prove that yes, it was me that ordered it instead of someone else (and I'm showing my ID at the liquor store). I've only bought porn twice - once a video and once a magazine full of naked men. I didn't get carded either time and this was back in the 90s. One of those times, I was 17. And if I needed to verify ID online (for payments, etc), I have a secure way of doing that, which folks in these states simply do not have. The websites don't need to keep any information on file either. And this is the very thing that pornhub is objecting to. If they were rolling out age verification that already has some of this in place, it'd be a different story. And a sidenote: I don't think it is all that wrong for a 17 year old to see what naked people look like. The rest of us need to be mature enough to make sure that young folks have a reasonable view of porn, including things like 'this isn't realistic and physically difficult for these reasons." A lot of so-called 'harm' is simply that we - the adults in the room - haven't held up our end of teaching.
  - skhunted 2y ago
    I'm middle aged - mid 40s, in fact - and places don't ask. Your appearance is the age verification. One can obviously tell you are of age to buy the products in question by looking at you. That’s the age verification. Communities are permitted to determine what constitutes age appropriate materials and at what age those materials can be consumed. Such standards ought to apply to web content too. There is nothing special about online that indicates it should be exempt.
    - hluska 2y ago
      I may be in the minority, but the community does not raise my child. I do. As such, I will talk to them, set our family’s standards after consultation and monitor appropriately. If it turns into a discipline situation, I have no qualms about going there. Or if it turns into a praise situation, I have just as few qualms about going there. Government regulation cannot and will not replace parenting. If government regulation worked, groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving would not have to exist. Moral is - talk to your kids. If porn is too hard to talk about, you weren’t ready to have children. It’s time to start building relationships with trustworthy adults who can talk about porn, sex, consent and all those other wonderful things with them. Because guess what dude? If parents don’t, someone will and their intentions may not be good.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  > It is already the case that for the most part whatever we do online is known by some third party entity. Online privacy is essentially dead and has been for many years. I’m not implying this is good or desirable but that it is just the reality of things. This is a very defeatist point of view. It is still possible to choose not to share the majority of your online activity with third parties. Online privacy is essentially dead for people who don't bother maintaining it. My online privacy is still largely intact, and I will do my best to keep it that way.
  - skhunted 2y ago
    You think it is still largely intact but what you do is monitored.
- hluska 2y ago
  We have a few different things going on here. First, age verification requires sharing a lot of PII with some of the dodgier companies on the web. Pornhub’s business past is shady…and they may be the least shady of the lot. Second, things like gay rights aren’t a solved problem. The most awful fact in all of this is that people can be killed for watching gay porn in many countries. If a country changes its policy dramatically, porn sites will have a database of people who have watched gay porn in their country. When someone physically checks my ID, I can be reasonably sure that it’s not going to be in a database. You could do age verification without a database, but it would be one hell of a lot easier with a database. And again, we’re looking at some of the dodgiest businesses on the web.
- CapcomGo 2y ago
  This is a parenting issue, not a government issue.
- belorn 2y ago
  I am going to make an interpretation that you think age restrictions are good public policy in general, and asking why others disagree. In the edit you say that "we all appear to agree that age verification is an acceptable goal", but I would disagree with that. I find age restrictions to be good public policy in general if-and-only-if the target of the restriction has a clear cost that is shared socially. Abuse of tobacco products and alcohol has a clear link to medical health care and the government is responsible to fund health care. The link between tobacco and cancer is an established fact. Alcohol has a more fuzzy link with poor health, but I suspect it get less fuzzy regarding children. The research that links porn and health is very much in dispute, similar to research that links violent movies and crime. At best it is inconclusive. Some countries has age restrictions on movies, others do not. There is also research on violent music and crime, violent games and crime, and the quality of all the research seems to be beyond poor. I do not think its good policy at all to construct laws using those. My conclusion is that governments should not make laws without having good ground to stand on. Until the quality of the research improve I find it better to let parents and schools determine when a specific child is mature enough to view specific media, be that movies, music, games, porn, or any other media.
  - skhunted 2y ago
    The vast majority of the people I've interacted with don't think hardcore porn should be viewable by children. Those who disagree and welcome to advocate for changing of the law in this regard. It is indisputable though that age verification laws regarding porn have been in place in the country for many decades. The internet is not special in that such laws/social mores do not apply. Such is my opinion.
    - belorn 2y ago
      In my country (Sweden) we do not have a specific age restricting law regarding purchasing porn. What we do have a generic law that forbid any film in cinema and TV broadcast from being viewed by children under 7, 11 and 15 years old if viewing that film is considered harmful for that age group. What is harmful is then delegated to a government department of censorship. A funny thing however is that the department of censorship was closed down in 2010, being at the time one of the worlds oldest with a creation date of 1911. With the closure, the above law has no longer any practical effect but the cinema industry and TV broadcast still volunteer to honor it to some degree. Historically, the department of censorship focused mostly on violent movies, but a famous examples was the cartoon Darkwin Duck which was deemed too violent for viewing by children. Teenage violence was often connected back in the days with violent scenes in specific movies. Public support for government censorship is currently in minority. The vast majority of people seems to think that publisher, cinema owners, parents and schools do a better job in deciding what should be viewable by children. Occasionally a specific film or game jumps into the news (like GTA 5), but they tend to die down fairly fast. Porn discussions also pop up once in a while, but they die down similarly fast since support for a return of government censorship is really low and the political parties generally know this. The only specific law about porn we do have is displaying of porn towards people without their consent in a way that can be seen as off putting. This target behaviors like people sending nudes to others without their consent.
submeta 2y ago
[flagged]
andy_ppp 2y ago
Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?
- Veliladon 2y ago
  Yes. Apple has the tech already with their digital driver's license initiative. It's probably more secure at stopping kids from accessing porn because it involves the on device FaceID authentication of the ID holder and could be verified and attested to each session vs just punching in a DL or CC number.
  - znpy 2y ago
    You're still trusting apple. It's all fun and games, until it isn't. Apple is what it is today, might not be the same Apple tomorrow.
    - leetrout 2y ago
      That is probably the goal. We need only look at... (checks notes) every other profit driven company (thats all of them) to see how this will go when quarterly earnings are flat and/or falling
- tanbog45 2y ago
  Someone would have to gather that data. It's not like a password that can be detached from physical reality. Your date of birth is somewhat inherent to your identity.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The federal government could offer it as a service, just like they do in the physical world with physical IDs.
    - 2y ago
shsbsbsks 2y ago
[dead]
ramses0 2y ago
This seems to be a Trojan horse for even further "personalizing" (de-anonymizing) the internet. If one site can require FaceID (or any sort of attestation) then either some, all, or arbitrary sites can require the same. I'm in the same boat... banking would be nice to support "non-anonymously", but why are they chasing against porn sites vs finance sites? It's such a slippery slope imagining requiring "age verification" for dating sites/apps, then same-same for access to email, then it's only going to be news sites that don't require age verification. (Whoops! Except NYT, WaPo, and the rest all have paywalls, and there's Fox ~News~ propaganda waiting in the wings to be "free, but needs your identity") Slippery slippery slopes here, and it must be intentional.
- QuarterReptile 2y ago
  >but why are they chasing against porn sites vs finance sites? They view pornography as a purely or at least sufficiently negative presence, justifying going after it. Legislating to withhold it from children is more straightforward and politically palatable than an outright ban. The deanonymization of the internet is probably an acceptable risk more than a desired outcome. I assume it's the same mindset as people who end free speech to crusade against hate speech.
- red004 2y ago
  [flagged]
7thpower 2y ago
Why are people so upset? Because this is not like ID’ing for cigarettes and alcohol. Largely speaking, people do not want there highly personal, sensitive activity and preferences to be attached to their identity and maintained by some entity that either may get hacked or may use it in any number of nefarious ways. Once again, porn may be on the forefront of pushing technology (VPNs) mainstream. I’m (Much more nuanced takes in the article. Ars is one of my favorite publications for this reason)
chasd00 2y ago
Have they started to offer a vpn service or is it only on the roadmap?
phendrenad2 2y ago
Why not allow liquor stores and other establishments that check IDs anyway issue a digital certificate that you are of age? Here's my ID, here's my pornhub account name, here's a service fee, digitally attest to the fact that I proved that I'm of legal age. Seems like the real motive here is deanonymization.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  When someone of age consistently buys liquor for minors, they'll eventually get caught in many cases, due to the likely rambunctiousness of inexperienced drinkers. Would the same be true here?
  - jmclnx 2y ago
    Maybe, but most of these purchases are by someone 21 (US Age) or a bit older to buy for friends. Very unlikely they will get caught. When I was young, everyone knew this was happening and these people were called "rum runners". And nothing was done. I doubt much as changed. Back to pornhub. There is no way to verify age, have security and anonymity at the same time on the internet. What would be stopping a "rum runner" from sharing his ID with a friend ? I think this is the main reason pornhub is blocking these states. They know it is really impossible to comply with the laws. They also know their customers want both security and anonymity. Once that trust is breached, customers will leave. For a good example there was that "affair" site a few years ago that had a breach and I think ended up folding.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    > they'll eventually get caught in many cases Can you share how exactly 'caught' and in how much 'many cases'? I'm exceptionally skeptical this works for any settlement bigger than a 1000 people.
ralferoo 2y ago
I am certain that Pornhub isn't doing this because they actually care about PII. However, I can think of a number of reason why they are taking this stance: * They don't want the work to do the verification to be their problem, and to be legally responsible when (not if) it goes wrong. * They know that age restricted devices are few and far between, so this is just an effort to kick the can down the road another decade. * Even if all new devices support age restrictions, there will be a myriad of legacy devices that will continue to have access. * They know people in the affected states will just use a VPN to another state anyway. If all the US eventually adopts these laws, they'll block the site entirely from the US and secretly fund and post informational videos on how to use VPNs to get around the restrictions. * By blocking the states, they get more publicity for themselves, but also potentially anger a group of people into arguing their cause. One thing that I think is interesting is that they are placing a lot of trust on reliable state-level geo-IP. They're only a few bad DB records or a BGP failure that routes people from these states to other servers away from a potentially costly fine. But maybe given the benefits above, this is just another cost of doing business for them.
- teeray 2y ago
  > they are placing a lot of trust on reliable state-level geo-IP Trust that could be contractually guaranteed, no? “We believe in our database so much that we’ll pay the fine if we’re wrong.”
- magicalist 2y ago
  > I am certain that Pornhub isn't doing this because they actually care about PII > They don't want the work to do the verification to be their problem, and to be legally responsible when (not if) it goes wrong. That's literally caring about PII. Quite a bit more than the state legislative sponsors of and "think of the children" advocates for these laws, too.
  - ralferoo 2y ago
    I guess I didn't phrase that quite right. My meaning was that I'm sure they don't actually care about protecting the privacy of your PII. I'm pretty certain that they'd sell it if they had the chance and/or use it to sell adverts. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that the only reason they have the ability to block users from certain states is because they already had that information as it made their data more valuable to advertisers. They're probably already sharing information down to the city or district level with advertisers.
nickpeterson 2y ago
Just make the law also apply to gun websites and watch it disappear.
- bitcharmer 2y ago
  I will never understand American culture. Titty visible - bad, dead schoolkids - ok. In many ways the country is spiralling into Gliead-esqe state from Handsmaid Tales and I can't stop watching it.
  - cowgoesmoo 2y ago
    It's really quite simple. Guns are protected by the constitution so citizens have a fighting chance to overthrow a tyrannical government, porn is not. Whether or not guns are a net positive to society is a different discussion, but the reasoning is clear and simple.
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    Autobhan speeds
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    > In many ways the country is spiralling into Gliead-esqe state from Handsmaid Tales After having more progressive abortion and trans care laws than Europe (where parties like the "Christian Democrats" in Germany rule), how exactly? The Republicans want to performatively participate in their moral panic by asking for (stupid) age verification; meanwhile, the Democrats control tech and media, AI stonecolds prompts with "Trump" as "dangerous content", they want to ban everything off the Internet they don't like, and would oppress free speech with Canada's new hate speech laws if they could.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  That's not really relevant? Gun sellers are required to verify the identities of purchasers, which already precludes children. So the law equally prohibits distribution of guns and pornography to children.
michael_vo 2y ago
VPN companies celebrate.
prirun 2y ago
It's really sad to me that our politicians (and other people pushing for this kind of regulation) think that viewing naked people online, even having sex, is more damaging to "the children" than seeing people's guts splayed out all over the place on TV and video games, heads chopped off with blood spurting everywhere, getting limbs chopped off, using machine guns to kill people, seeing kids severely bullied at school, and so on. Of course, I don't really think the politicians give much of a shit about porn. They just want the mechanisms in place to monitor everyone's activities online, and porn is the easiest place to start. Then it will expand to everything else.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  I think the people who support this (for the children) also support preventing children from seeing violence. (And I agree that seeing either is bad for children, I just don't think requiring age verification actually helps in anyway.)
noodlesUK 2y ago
I feel like there are three places that you can conceivably do age restrictions, each with their respective pros and cons. On the client: The typical parental controls situation with a blocklist. Responsible adult sites could send an HTTP header like X-Adult-Content or something to ensure they would be blocked by clients with the controls on. This could be enforced by regulation, with devices for children required to respect that header in addition to shipping with a blocklist. This couldn't be bypassed with something like a VPN (which you probably couldn't install with parental controls on anyway), because it would be baked into the client. In the network: Similar blocklist style situation - this already exists to a certain extent in some countries. Mobile phone providers and ISPs would be required to block adult content (via dns or similar) by default, with a toggle to switch it off available to the adult account owner. We already block illegal content this way. On the server side: This requires adult websites to be cooperative, which they will only be if they care about the jurisdiction in question. This potentially pushes kids/others to access sketchier sites which wouldn't be blocked. I am strongly for pushing this down the stack to the client. I don't have kids, but I'm pretty sure iOS and Android as well as MacOS and Windows all have robust parental control systems. I'm sure people use them, and we can safely encourage people to use them more. If they aren't on by default already for children, they could be. Short of biometric verification with presence detection I don't see how it's possible to do remote age verification in a good enough way that you couldn't just use an adult's credit card or device to bypass it. Anyone who knows anything about tech knows this is just a wedge issue, and people aren't interested in solutions to the actual problem of kids accessing inappropriate material, only soundbites.
cykros 2y ago
In other news, residents of these states are reminded of the fact that Pornhub is perhaps among the most vanilla porn and above board porn sites out there compared with the likes of heavy-r, motherless, efukt, and no doubt far more depraved content a simple click away, and under the radar of these morality crusaders. Don't assume that just because Pornhub doesn't include scat, drugged, zoophilic, voyeur, nonconsentual, and other more frowned upon content that it isn't still entirely available if you're foolish enough to let your kid on the Internet without monitoring.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  The Internet is for porn.

55 points by perihelions 2y ago

skhunted 2y ago

[flagged]

dudul 2y ago
Strawman. PornHub doesn't argue against age verification, it criticizes the poorly designed implementation. Showing my ID at the liquor store to buy alcohol is not comparable to having to put my ID and PII in a poorly secured database. Databases that get breached again and again with virtually no consequences for the owner.
- dwighttk 2y ago
  >Databases that get breached again and again with virtually no consequences for the owner. Pornhub is gonna have a hard time using ”our database is gonna be hacked” as an argument.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Veliladon 2y ago
  Sadly this is a feature not a bug for the lawmakers who wrote the laws. They want databases of PII to be breached in order for porn consumers to be publicly named and shamed without the political blowback or getting their hands dirty.
  - rescripting 2y ago
    The first thing that would happen is that the breach would be scoured for politicians names. They’d be just as vulnerable to this kind of blow back.
    - nashashmi 2y ago
      I’m sure they are thinking of certain colleagues to expose. That is why they passed the law. The kinds that could be threatened into compliance with rank and file. And future congressmen too. Jeffrey Epstein was known for playing with this kind of power.
    - affinepplan 2y ago
      I suspect that scouring would find approximately 535 congressmen and 200 million americans. seriously, how much "blow back" could there possibly be to revealing someone has frequented PH?
      - Izkata 2y ago
        The question isn't so much does a person look at porn, it's more what porn do they like. If pornhub is storing the personal information, it could be matched to specific videos, which if it's at all fetish-specific could be blackmail material.
    - lucianbr 2y ago
      So for example if you were known to have paid for sex with a porn star, your political career would definitely be over. Right? Or how it never turns out that politicians who pushed for persecution of gays are gay themselves. Ever.
  - urtuti 2y ago
    Same with prostitution and Nordic model. Porn is a bad thing, we ban it by prosecuting consumers.
- sudden_dystopia 2y ago
  Do you really think they give a damn about privacy? If they care so much about privacy, wouldn’t they also be proclaiming how their website doesn’t track you and gobble identifying data? Or is it they are just hiding behind that argument because it sounds noble and their real concern is a business one? Also, how secure do you think the state systems are that provide those ID’s?
- skhunted 2y ago
  Pornhub could have implemented age verification a long time ago and didn’t. It didn’t suggest such a thing despite knowing underage kids were viewing their content. Now they try to act all reasonable. They aren’t a victim in this. They waited until a political solution was imposed to propose reasonable steps to combat the problem. I’m all for reasonable solutions and don’t know the best way forward. I do know there is a problem with kids viewing content on these sites and I do know that these sites don’t care about that because none of them ever tried to do anything to prevent this.
Veliladon 2y ago
They're not saying age verification is wrong, but dozens of skeezy sites taking in personally identifiable information who should have no business in taking in personally identifiable information is a bad idea. Pornhub advocate for devices to do authentication of ID (i.e. Apple has FaceID and a bunch of stuff for reading IDs already as part of their digital ID initiative) and then attesting the user is of age. This could remain entirely anonymous and more secure than a kid inputting his dad's drivers license number that he stole from the dad's wallet.
- shsbsbsks 2y ago
  [dead]
- skhunted 2y ago
  Sure, that’s reasonable. Let’s implement this. In fact Pornhub could have implemented this on its own and staved off the “need” for a government imposed solution. It knew there was a problem and did nothing.
  - nhinck3 2y ago
    What problem?
    - skhunted 2y ago
      Obviously children viewing hardcore porn on Pornhub’s sites.
      - nhinck3 2y ago
        Do you have any evidence that this was a problem?
        skhunted 2y ago
        Providing access to hardcore porn to people regardless of their age is a problem.
nhinck3 2y ago
Typically because there are incredibly poor laws around retention and use of private information collections and I typically loathe having any company retain my personal information without a really good reason (and this isn't a good reason).
globular-toast 2y ago
According to TFA they don't oppose age verification, they oppose the required method of age verification, namely submitting personal information and IDs. They say they would support secure verification, I guess like having a digital signature from an authority, like the government. I wonder if PornHub is doing anything to help this happen, though. I doubt it...
- skhunted 2y ago
  They do oppose age verification because despite knowing there was a problem of underage people viewing their content they did nothing to stop this. Now a government solution has been imposed they are acting as if they are now some how a responsible business. I don’t know the answers or the right way to implement things but age verification is not an unreasonable requirement.
Tao3300 2y ago
Maybe you're right, but in the real world I'm already getting multiple letters a year from companies that have my PII and have had an unexpected breach. The issue isn't policy, it's implementation.
nope1000 2y ago
Verification maybe? I don't like the idea that a porn website could tie my real identity to the watch history (I assume you have to be logged in once you verified) and sell that to whomever.
noodlesUK 2y ago
That's a potentially reasonable argument, however there are a couple of issues mapping from the physical precedent to the digital world. In the physical world you would show your ID to the store clerk, or (more likely) not even be asked for ID at all if you were sufficiently old-looking. In the digital world, everyone has to show proof of age, as there's no quick sanity check. Further, none of these states have a privacy preserving way of demonstrating age. All of them require either passing payment details or identity details to an intermediary or the website. The recipient of the identity then gets to hold onto whatever details you provided for the rest of time, and may use them for stuff like ad targeting. This is in an industry that is well-reputed for being scammy.
nashashmi 2y ago
No one wants to give their ID card and real name for despicable things like this. Even the show people in the industry cover their faces
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  > No one Hahaha, you would be shocked.
watwut 2y ago
No one is putting my name and date of birth into any database when I am buying alcohol.
- rascul 2y ago
  I've found some places require an ID scan to sell alcohol. No exceptions even if you're obviously 65 years old.
Broken_Hippo 2y ago
I literally cannot remember the last time I had to show proof of age to buy tobacco or alcohol. I'm middle aged - mid 40s, in fact - and places don't ask. If I order alcohol, the reason I'm showing ID is to prove that yes, it was me that ordered it instead of someone else (and I'm showing my ID at the liquor store). I've only bought porn twice - once a video and once a magazine full of naked men. I didn't get carded either time and this was back in the 90s. One of those times, I was 17. And if I needed to verify ID online (for payments, etc), I have a secure way of doing that, which folks in these states simply do not have. The websites don't need to keep any information on file either. And this is the very thing that pornhub is objecting to. If they were rolling out age verification that already has some of this in place, it'd be a different story. And a sidenote: I don't think it is all that wrong for a 17 year old to see what naked people look like. The rest of us need to be mature enough to make sure that young folks have a reasonable view of porn, including things like 'this isn't realistic and physically difficult for these reasons." A lot of so-called 'harm' is simply that we - the adults in the room - haven't held up our end of teaching.
- skhunted 2y ago
  I'm middle aged - mid 40s, in fact - and places don't ask. Your appearance is the age verification. One can obviously tell you are of age to buy the products in question by looking at you. That’s the age verification. Communities are permitted to determine what constitutes age appropriate materials and at what age those materials can be consumed. Such standards ought to apply to web content too. There is nothing special about online that indicates it should be exempt.
  - hluska 2y ago
    I may be in the minority, but the community does not raise my child. I do. As such, I will talk to them, set our family’s standards after consultation and monitor appropriately. If it turns into a discipline situation, I have no qualms about going there. Or if it turns into a praise situation, I have just as few qualms about going there. Government regulation cannot and will not replace parenting. If government regulation worked, groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving would not have to exist. Moral is - talk to your kids. If porn is too hard to talk about, you weren’t ready to have children. It’s time to start building relationships with trustworthy adults who can talk about porn, sex, consent and all those other wonderful things with them. Because guess what dude? If parents don’t, someone will and their intentions may not be good.
aniviacat 2y ago
> It is already the case that for the most part whatever we do online is known by some third party entity. Online privacy is essentially dead and has been for many years. I’m not implying this is good or desirable but that it is just the reality of things. This is a very defeatist point of view. It is still possible to choose not to share the majority of your online activity with third parties. Online privacy is essentially dead for people who don't bother maintaining it. My online privacy is still largely intact, and I will do my best to keep it that way.
- skhunted 2y ago
  You think it is still largely intact but what you do is monitored.
hluska 2y ago
We have a few different things going on here. First, age verification requires sharing a lot of PII with some of the dodgier companies on the web. Pornhub’s business past is shady…and they may be the least shady of the lot. Second, things like gay rights aren’t a solved problem. The most awful fact in all of this is that people can be killed for watching gay porn in many countries. If a country changes its policy dramatically, porn sites will have a database of people who have watched gay porn in their country. When someone physically checks my ID, I can be reasonably sure that it’s not going to be in a database. You could do age verification without a database, but it would be one hell of a lot easier with a database. And again, we’re looking at some of the dodgiest businesses on the web.
CapcomGo 2y ago
This is a parenting issue, not a government issue.
belorn 2y ago
I am going to make an interpretation that you think age restrictions are good public policy in general, and asking why others disagree. In the edit you say that "we all appear to agree that age verification is an acceptable goal", but I would disagree with that. I find age restrictions to be good public policy in general if-and-only-if the target of the restriction has a clear cost that is shared socially. Abuse of tobacco products and alcohol has a clear link to medical health care and the government is responsible to fund health care. The link between tobacco and cancer is an established fact. Alcohol has a more fuzzy link with poor health, but I suspect it get less fuzzy regarding children. The research that links porn and health is very much in dispute, similar to research that links violent movies and crime. At best it is inconclusive. Some countries has age restrictions on movies, others do not. There is also research on violent music and crime, violent games and crime, and the quality of all the research seems to be beyond poor. I do not think its good policy at all to construct laws using those. My conclusion is that governments should not make laws without having good ground to stand on. Until the quality of the research improve I find it better to let parents and schools determine when a specific child is mature enough to view specific media, be that movies, music, games, porn, or any other media.
- skhunted 2y ago
  The vast majority of the people I've interacted with don't think hardcore porn should be viewable by children. Those who disagree and welcome to advocate for changing of the law in this regard. It is indisputable though that age verification laws regarding porn have been in place in the country for many decades. The internet is not special in that such laws/social mores do not apply. Such is my opinion.
  - belorn 2y ago
    In my country (Sweden) we do not have a specific age restricting law regarding purchasing porn. What we do have a generic law that forbid any film in cinema and TV broadcast from being viewed by children under 7, 11 and 15 years old if viewing that film is considered harmful for that age group. What is harmful is then delegated to a government department of censorship. A funny thing however is that the department of censorship was closed down in 2010, being at the time one of the worlds oldest with a creation date of 1911. With the closure, the above law has no longer any practical effect but the cinema industry and TV broadcast still volunteer to honor it to some degree. Historically, the department of censorship focused mostly on violent movies, but a famous examples was the cartoon Darkwin Duck which was deemed too violent for viewing by children. Teenage violence was often connected back in the days with violent scenes in specific movies. Public support for government censorship is currently in minority. The vast majority of people seems to think that publisher, cinema owners, parents and schools do a better job in deciding what should be viewable by children. Occasionally a specific film or game jumps into the news (like GTA 5), but they tend to die down fairly fast. Porn discussions also pop up once in a while, but they die down similarly fast since support for a return of government censorship is really low and the political parties generally know this. The only specific law about porn we do have is displaying of porn towards people without their consent in a way that can be seen as off putting. This target behaviors like people sending nudes to others without their consent.

submeta 2y ago

[flagged]

andy_ppp 2y ago

Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?

Veliladon 2y ago
Yes. Apple has the tech already with their digital driver's license initiative. It's probably more secure at stopping kids from accessing porn because it involves the on device FaceID authentication of the ID holder and could be verified and attested to each session vs just punching in a DL or CC number.
- znpy 2y ago
  You're still trusting apple. It's all fun and games, until it isn't. Apple is what it is today, might not be the same Apple tomorrow.
  - leetrout 2y ago
    That is probably the goal. We need only look at... (checks notes) every other profit driven company (thats all of them) to see how this will go when quarterly earnings are flat and/or falling
tanbog45 2y ago
Someone would have to gather that data. It's not like a password that can be detached from physical reality. Your date of birth is somewhat inherent to your identity.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  The federal government could offer it as a service, just like they do in the physical world with physical IDs.
  - 2y ago

shsbsbsks 2y ago

[dead]

ramses0 2y ago

This seems to be a Trojan horse for even further "personalizing" (de-anonymizing) the internet. If one site can require FaceID (or any sort of attestation) then either some, all, or arbitrary sites can require the same. I'm in the same boat... banking would be nice to support "non-anonymously", but why are they chasing against porn sites vs finance sites? It's such a slippery slope imagining requiring "age verification" for dating sites/apps, then same-same for access to email, then it's only going to be news sites that don't require age verification. (Whoops! Except NYT, WaPo, and the rest all have paywalls, and there's Fox ~News~ propaganda waiting in the wings to be "free, but needs your identity") Slippery slippery slopes here, and it must be intentional.

QuarterReptile 2y ago
>but why are they chasing against porn sites vs finance sites? They view pornography as a purely or at least sufficiently negative presence, justifying going after it. Legislating to withhold it from children is more straightforward and politically palatable than an outright ban. The deanonymization of the internet is probably an acceptable risk more than a desired outcome. I assume it's the same mindset as people who end free speech to crusade against hate speech.
red004 2y ago
[flagged]

7thpower 2y ago

Why are people so upset? Because this is not like ID’ing for cigarettes and alcohol. Largely speaking, people do not want there highly personal, sensitive activity and preferences to be attached to their identity and maintained by some entity that either may get hacked or may use it in any number of nefarious ways. Once again, porn may be on the forefront of pushing technology (VPNs) mainstream. I’m (Much more nuanced takes in the article. Ars is one of my favorite publications for this reason)

chasd00 2y ago

Have they started to offer a vpn service or is it only on the roadmap?

phendrenad2 2y ago

Why not allow liquor stores and other establishments that check IDs anyway issue a digital certificate that you are of age? Here's my ID, here's my pornhub account name, here's a service fee, digitally attest to the fact that I proved that I'm of legal age. Seems like the real motive here is deanonymization.

hunter2_ 2y ago
When someone of age consistently buys liquor for minors, they'll eventually get caught in many cases, due to the likely rambunctiousness of inexperienced drinkers. Would the same be true here?
- jmclnx 2y ago
  Maybe, but most of these purchases are by someone 21 (US Age) or a bit older to buy for friends. Very unlikely they will get caught. When I was young, everyone knew this was happening and these people were called "rum runners". And nothing was done. I doubt much as changed. Back to pornhub. There is no way to verify age, have security and anonymity at the same time on the internet. What would be stopping a "rum runner" from sharing his ID with a friend ? I think this is the main reason pornhub is blocking these states. They know it is really impossible to comply with the laws. They also know their customers want both security and anonymity. Once that trust is breached, customers will leave. For a good example there was that "affair" site a few years ago that had a breach and I think ended up folding.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > they'll eventually get caught in many cases Can you share how exactly 'caught' and in how much 'many cases'? I'm exceptionally skeptical this works for any settlement bigger than a 1000 people.

ralferoo 2y ago

I am certain that Pornhub isn't doing this because they actually care about PII. However, I can think of a number of reason why they are taking this stance: * They don't want the work to do the verification to be their problem, and to be legally responsible when (not if) it goes wrong. * They know that age restricted devices are few and far between, so this is just an effort to kick the can down the road another decade. * Even if all new devices support age restrictions, there will be a myriad of legacy devices that will continue to have access. * They know people in the affected states will just use a VPN to another state anyway. If all the US eventually adopts these laws, they'll block the site entirely from the US and secretly fund and post informational videos on how to use VPNs to get around the restrictions. * By blocking the states, they get more publicity for themselves, but also potentially anger a group of people into arguing their cause. One thing that I think is interesting is that they are placing a lot of trust on reliable state-level geo-IP. They're only a few bad DB records or a BGP failure that routes people from these states to other servers away from a potentially costly fine. But maybe given the benefits above, this is just another cost of doing business for them.

teeray 2y ago
> they are placing a lot of trust on reliable state-level geo-IP Trust that could be contractually guaranteed, no? “We believe in our database so much that we’ll pay the fine if we’re wrong.”
magicalist 2y ago
> I am certain that Pornhub isn't doing this because they actually care about PII > They don't want the work to do the verification to be their problem, and to be legally responsible when (not if) it goes wrong. That's literally caring about PII. Quite a bit more than the state legislative sponsors of and "think of the children" advocates for these laws, too.
- ralferoo 2y ago
  I guess I didn't phrase that quite right. My meaning was that I'm sure they don't actually care about protecting the privacy of your PII. I'm pretty certain that they'd sell it if they had the chance and/or use it to sell adverts. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that the only reason they have the ability to block users from certain states is because they already had that information as it made their data more valuable to advertisers. They're probably already sharing information down to the city or district level with advertisers.

nickpeterson 2y ago

Just make the law also apply to gun websites and watch it disappear.

bitcharmer 2y ago
I will never understand American culture. Titty visible - bad, dead schoolkids - ok. In many ways the country is spiralling into Gliead-esqe state from Handsmaid Tales and I can't stop watching it.
- cowgoesmoo 2y ago
  It's really quite simple. Guns are protected by the constitution so citizens have a fighting chance to overthrow a tyrannical government, porn is not. Whether or not guns are a net positive to society is a different discussion, but the reasoning is clear and simple.
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  Autobhan speeds
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  > In many ways the country is spiralling into Gliead-esqe state from Handsmaid Tales After having more progressive abortion and trans care laws than Europe (where parties like the "Christian Democrats" in Germany rule), how exactly? The Republicans want to performatively participate in their moral panic by asking for (stupid) age verification; meanwhile, the Democrats control tech and media, AI stonecolds prompts with "Trump" as "dangerous content", they want to ban everything off the Internet they don't like, and would oppress free speech with Canada's new hate speech laws if they could.
Ferret7446 2y ago
That's not really relevant? Gun sellers are required to verify the identities of purchasers, which already precludes children. So the law equally prohibits distribution of guns and pornography to children.

michael_vo 2y ago

VPN companies celebrate.

prirun 2y ago

It's really sad to me that our politicians (and other people pushing for this kind of regulation) think that viewing naked people online, even having sex, is more damaging to "the children" than seeing people's guts splayed out all over the place on TV and video games, heads chopped off with blood spurting everywhere, getting limbs chopped off, using machine guns to kill people, seeing kids severely bullied at school, and so on. Of course, I don't really think the politicians give much of a shit about porn. They just want the mechanisms in place to monitor everyone's activities online, and porn is the easiest place to start. Then it will expand to everything else.

Ferret7446 2y ago
I think the people who support this (for the children) also support preventing children from seeing violence. (And I agree that seeing either is bad for children, I just don't think requiring age verification actually helps in anyway.)

noodlesUK 2y ago

I feel like there are three places that you can conceivably do age restrictions, each with their respective pros and cons. On the client: The typical parental controls situation with a blocklist. Responsible adult sites could send an HTTP header like X-Adult-Content or something to ensure they would be blocked by clients with the controls on. This could be enforced by regulation, with devices for children required to respect that header in addition to shipping with a blocklist. This couldn't be bypassed with something like a VPN (which you probably couldn't install with parental controls on anyway), because it would be baked into the client. In the network: Similar blocklist style situation - this already exists to a certain extent in some countries. Mobile phone providers and ISPs would be required to block adult content (via dns or similar) by default, with a toggle to switch it off available to the adult account owner. We already block illegal content this way. On the server side: This requires adult websites to be cooperative, which they will only be if they care about the jurisdiction in question. This potentially pushes kids/others to access sketchier sites which wouldn't be blocked. I am strongly for pushing this down the stack to the client. I don't have kids, but I'm pretty sure iOS and Android as well as MacOS and Windows all have robust parental control systems. I'm sure people use them, and we can safely encourage people to use them more. If they aren't on by default already for children, they could be. Short of biometric verification with presence detection I don't see how it's possible to do remote age verification in a good enough way that you couldn't just use an adult's credit card or device to bypass it. Anyone who knows anything about tech knows this is just a wedge issue, and people aren't interested in solutions to the actual problem of kids accessing inappropriate material, only soundbites.

cykros 2y ago

In other news, residents of these states are reminded of the fact that Pornhub is perhaps among the most vanilla porn and above board porn sites out there compared with the likes of heavy-r, motherless, efukt, and no doubt far more depraved content a simple click away, and under the radar of these morality crusaders. Don't assume that just because Pornhub doesn't include scat, drugged, zoophilic, voyeur, nonconsentual, and other more frowned upon content that it isn't still entirely available if you're foolish enough to let your kid on the Internet without monitoring.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
The Internet is for porn.