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Others have said this, I'm sure, but this will move past porn _quickly_. Once there is agreed-up age verification for pornography, much of the professional inte
by everdrive 1y ago
Others have said this, I'm sure, but this will move past porn _quickly_. Once there is agreed-up age verification for pornography, much of the professional internet will require identity verification to do _anything_. This is one of the bigger nails in the coffin for the free internet, and this true whether or not you're happy with all the pornography out there.
- zeroonetwothree 1y agoI don’t agree, at least as far as legal obligation goes. The average voter is far more worried about porn and other explicit content and not so much about anything else.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- __loam 1y agoThis doesn't really track with widespread and normalized use of pornographic materials, including written descriptions, by most adults in this country. There's a pretty wide gulf between "I don't think kids should be able to access this stuff" and "I think we need to supercharge the surveillance state and destroy the first amendment"
- 827a 1y agoThis doesn't destroy the first amendment any more than requiring an ID & background check to purchase a firearm destroys the second amendment. Which is to say that it might, but for exactly the same reason, so The People ultimately need to decide on a consistent choice of interpretation.
- ozgrakkurt 1y agoExcept one person googling and watching porn has nothing to do with other people, very different from buying guns
- 827a 1y agoIt has as much to do with other people as buying guns does. What about the actresses in the porn content; people the world, clearly including you, so quickly forget about? The concerning number of women who are trapped into this industry, usually in third world countries, by men? What about the people on the other side of the personal relationships of individuals who consume this content; the averted gazes, their treatment of women, how that impacts their community and their children?
- ozgrakkurt 1y agoAsking id from the person watching porn has nothing to do with making porn illegal. If you think it is harmful to the people doing the porn, then it should be illegal. If not, asking for id is super useless. Also if watching porn is bad for the person’s spouse then they shouldn’t do it, which has nothing to do with asking for id
- 827a 1y agoBut isn't harm minimization a thing? That's something we practice in other domains, like providing clean needles to drug addicts. After all, if drug use is harmful to the people doing drugs, then it should be illegal. So; making things illegal often doesn't solve the problem. Making it harder to consume porn reduces consumption which reduces the amount of money being funneled into the industry, which might be beneficial to those harmed by it (both producers and consumers). Versus, making it illegal might have a prohibition-style impact, and is, of course, legally tenuous anyway.
- ozgrakkurt 1y agoI agree but, then they can go after people producing porn, not people that watch it. This is the same as going after the drug addicts. This feels like going after the people on the more vulnerable side because it is easy. Which signals it is more about forcing people to not do something instead of trying to genuinely help them. But going after people producing porn is a no no because they have money and they are organised. Also imo the intention of people trying implement things like this is just about surveillance and has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the families, children, addicts etc. etc.
- rocqua 1y ago1A: Congress shall make no law ... Abridging the freedom of speech. (Note: freedom of speech includes the ability to listen to what you want) 2A: ... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Congress making a law that prevents minors from accesing information is a clearly a breach of the first text. Point of sale ID checks for guns are much less clearly "infringing on the right to keep arms". It is only limiting the sale, not the ownership.
- 827a 1y agoFine, then ATF Class 3 licenses, which are required to keep and bear some kinds of arms, are a breach of the 2A similar to how the 1A is being breached here.
- int_19h 1y agoNFL stuff is actually a pretty good example of largely pointless law considering that what it does is effectively just make the items in question more expensive by taxing them and artificially limiting supply. If you want to own a machine gun, a grenade launcher, or even a fully functional tank in US, you still can so long as you're rich enough to afford it (unless your state has laws banning it). There are no additional restrictions on who can and cannot own that stuff beyond the requirement to pay the tax.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoDid you miss the recent years of some states trying to ban gay/trans books from libraries? Or even just books written by gay/trans authors? It's been part of their playbook for years to try and assosiate transgenderism with pornographic. You are right, the average voter is not worried about any single enforcement outside of CSAM. The people who will exploit this are not just "your average voter".
- nikanj 1y agoAnd honestly, with the advent of AI spam everywhere, I'd be quite happy to visit a version of the internet where everyone is a certified real person
- baq 1y agoNo idea why you’re getting downvoted when there’s a slow but unstoppable migration of everything into discord or other walled, somewhat LLM-proof gardens.
- tines 1y agoWalled gardens are only LLM-proof until some AI company makes an offer for the data.
- nikanj 1y agoI don’t care about that. I care about the number of DMs I get from ”superhorni420” offering me her nudes I don’t really see a future where Discord would let an AI company post the kind of 24/7 porn+crypto+scams you get in your email spam folder
- Aerroon 1y agoBut that's already been happening in discord for years.
- layer8 1y agoThe parent’s point is that identity verification would stop that.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoWhere in this statement did people conclude that all websites require identification? Even if they did, you know the technocrats would just pay a few million to have the government look the other way. I don't see the upside here.
- baq 1y agoI’d rather have this regulated properly before cloudflare becomes the defacto standard of id checks.
- kgwxd 1y agoNothing is going to be "regulated properly" for at least the next 3.5 years, and we'll all be dealing with backwards decline for decades after. That's best case, but i'm guessing It'll be even worse than the "radicals" are shouting about.
- squigz 1y agoWhat issues do you have with Cloudflare becoming the defacto standard that wouldn't also apply to whatever would come of regulating it 'properly'?
- fluidcruft 1y agoAge verification seems like a subset of human verification so if it gets rid of both bots and captchas then why not?
- Robotbeat 1y agoPretty sure you can guess a few.
- fluidcruft 1y agoGuess a few what?
- layer8 1y agoReasons why not.
- fluidcruft 1y agoI still don't see any reason erasing bots and captchas from my online experience is bad. I hate bots and captchas. They add absolutely no value to my life. Conversely there is lots to be gained if imagine if something like X or reddit or whatever can anonymously verify that a user is a person and over 18 or 21 or 30 even (whatever) without having to directly handle identities. It's could be all the benefits of a bouncer checking for a pulse and valid ID without the privacy invasion. If done correctly it can also make fraud more difficult.
- sigwinch 1y agoThe article concludes that age verification must repeat every 60 minutes. And when there’s doubt about safe harbor, better safe than sorry. There’s a chance you’ll look back at captchas with relish.
- fluidcruft 1y agoThe article starts as > Just in time for the Fourth of July, last week the Supreme Court effectively nullified the First Amendment for any writers, like me, who include sex scenes in their writing, *intended for other adults* There you have it. The author already is self-aware of the appropriateness of their creation for minors. All that's needed is an easy way for the author to click "intended for adults" on whatever material they are creating and the entire article becomes nothing more than yapping into the wind. Substack can easily build that as a feature for example. Reddit already has that with its "NSFW" flags (but does not currently verify accounts are actually 18yo+ adult humans). Generally, it seems like silicon valley has become so entitled to taking the mile that the threat of taking back an inch brings out the hysterical Chicken Little fursona.
- hackyhacky 1y agoThis doesn't sound so bad. I would much prefer to have discussions about politics, technology, or religion safe in the knowledge that I am not inadvertently communicating with a minor.
- HaZeust 1y agoI had very passionate talks online about all 3 categories before I turned 18, and I got a lot of feedback, from older folk I didn't previously know, that I shaped opinions and formed new perspectives - and a lot of the talks sure as shit did the same for me. I cannot say I would have nearly the same current passion that I do for technology, aspects of politics, and philosophy (including that of religion) without such exposures during my adolescent years, and I'm sure you'd be hard-pressed to find others young enough that wouldn't say the same - provided they have an adequate baseline of introspection. On that note, out of all the examples you could have given for discussion categories that are unbecoming to have with minors, you chose 3 relatively benign ones, lol.
- layer8 1y agoParent said identity verification, not age verification.
- johnnyanmac 1y agoI don't care if they are 16 or 68, I discuss about topics, not necesarily with the person themself. the former can be insightful and the latter still be extremely close minded. I also don't understand why the government should control who I can talk to in a digital space. Maybe start investigating the president's flight records if you suddenly care about children interacting with adults.
- tenacious_tuna 1y ago> safe in the knowledge that I am not inadvertently communicating with a minor. Why is that so bad? As a kid I really appreciated participating in mixed-age discussions on many topics. I view that as part of what it means to grow into a "young adult." Too often I think we (North American society) assume that school, with all it's rigorous age separation, gives kids the space and instruction they need to do well in the world but inevitably we get 18 year olds with no awareness of how the world functions beyond themselves... because they've only ever dealt with people of the same age. The world is a diverse place; ideologically, racially, and in age. We, adults, need to be comfortable communicating with both children and legal minors because they'll be future citizens of the world [added in edit:] and they need to learn those skills too. Overall, we keep trying to model a world that filters it's own interactions towards children, which is flawed to begin with, but at some point people stop being children, and where does that leave them w.r.t. their expectations of others? If you've never had to consider that an adult might act in bad faith because your world has been so sanitized, are you prepared for a world with bad actors in it?
- mathiaspoint 1y agoSharing/storing child porn is already illegal and punished far more harshly. So it's not like we've gone from zero to one. We've been censoring things people don't like for a little while now.
- 3836293648 1y agoSure, but that is a step from banning because it's harmful to the producer to banning because it's harmful to the consumer
- mathiaspoint 1y agoMaybe if it were the creation of child porn that were illegal but that's not how the law is written.
- int_19h 1y agoWe're long past that point. Many (most?) Western governments ban simulated CP, including non-realistic stuff like cartoons or even purely textual descriptions. Some go further still. E.g. in Australia, "laws also cover depictions of sexual acts involving people over the threshold age who are simulating or otherwise alluding to being underage, even if all those involved are of a legal age."
- buyucu 1y agoThis is why they are doing it. Goverments wants ID-check before anyone uses the internet. So they pick a topic like pornography to get their foot through the door. It's salami tactics.
- jalapeno_a 1y ago[dead]
- like_any_other 1y agoAlready in the works: Australia is quietly introducing 'unprecedented' age checks for search engines like Google - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-search-engines/105516256 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-11/age-verification-sear...
- sunaookami 1y agoThe difference between the comments there (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44528204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44528204) and here is quite funny.