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Completely agree. The internet works differently than how people want it to, and filtering services are notoriously easy to bypass. Even if these age-verificati

Completely agree. The internet works differently than how people want it to, and filtering services are notoriously easy to bypass. Even if these age-verification laws passed with resounding scope and support, what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws. The leads to run down would be legion. I think you could seriously degrade the porn industry (which I wouldn't necessarily mind) but it would be more or less impossible to prevent unauthorized internet users from accessing pornography. And of course that's the say nothing of the blast radius that would come with age-verification becoming entrenched on the internet.

armchairhacker 8mo ago
> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot, and these governments are still democracies.
- a456463 8mo ago
  eh... they are more like `dumbocracies` with these measures. None of this is to protect children. Except to satisfy rabid parents who think the world needs to serve them.
- 9dev 8mo ago
  That isn’t necessary because porn companies don’t exist to gift orgasms, but to make money. They need US citizens to pay them for premium content and subscriptions, and that dependency means they’ll have to comply with US laws.
  - everdrive 8mo ago
    The words of someone who does not actually look at pornography. The vast majority of pornography-by-consumption is free / ad-supported. Customers are not "paying" and those ads are usually the bottom of the barrel with regard to sleaziness or legality.
    - 9dev 8mo ago
      It’s still just a sales funnel for ads or subscriptions. Why do you think porn sites exist?
  - 2duct 8mo ago
    Plenty of porn exists for free, posted online by models or digital artists. It's archived in places that circumvent copyright, don't require payment or accounts, and are easily accessible.
    - SiempreViernes 8mo ago
      Sure: models need to advertise to find buyers too, but there's certainly not as many models or rehosts if there's no money to be made anywhere.
      - DaedalusII 8mo ago
        pornography is not a profitable industry. even famous participants like 'mia khalifa' only made GBP9.5k (USD 12.8k) lifetime earnings. The average onlyfans has about 21 fans, with an average subscription price of $7.20. the future of the industry is probably ai slop, personalised ai, and so on one of the purposes of the porn industry in 00s was money laundering: cash only, large stores with no CCTV, very sparse records, not possible to objectively value why a dvd was being sold for $85
        defrost 8mo ago
        The industry is profitable .. the onlyfans founder is now worth circa $8 billion. Being grist in the mill of that industry, however, only leads to being ground up for the consumption of others.
- big-and-small 8mo ago
  > A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. Porn is not just political information about human right abuses, government overreach or heavily censored overview of concentration camps for "group X". People can live just fine with government censorship buying into any kind of propaganda. Kids would find a way to access porn though. Whatever it VPNs, tor or USB stick black market. Government cant even win war on drugs and you expect them to successfully ban porn. What a joke.
  - hellojesus 8mo ago
    It's as easy as parents keeping the default router password, a kid logging in and then setting up port forwarding to a device on a port that they're running a server on, tied to their current residential ip, and then pinging their friends that ip and allowing them all to connect and download whatever files or upload whatever files. The peer-to-peer network could really start establishing itself in ephemeral and very hard to track ways. All you need is one kid with access to a vpn to torrent without copyright concerns to seed the network. Or one kid to get its parents to buy a domain and use that as an anchor so that the dns to ip is set behind the scenes for the peers.
- logicchains 8mo ago
  Even China hasn't been remotely successful at banning porn, and it already has the great firewall and porn is illegal there.
- LtWorf 8mo ago
  Oh but brainrot would not be blocked, how would poor Meta keep making money otherwise? What will be blocked are news outlets that don't agree with the government propaganda.
blackqueeriroh 8mo ago
It’s very odd to hear you complain about age verification but then be fine with ruining the porn industry

armchairhacker 8mo ago

> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot, and these governments are still democracies.

a456463 8mo ago
eh... they are more like `dumbocracies` with these measures. None of this is to protect children. Except to satisfy rabid parents who think the world needs to serve them.
9dev 8mo ago
That isn’t necessary because porn companies don’t exist to gift orgasms, but to make money. They need US citizens to pay them for premium content and subscriptions, and that dependency means they’ll have to comply with US laws.
- everdrive 8mo ago
  The words of someone who does not actually look at pornography. The vast majority of pornography-by-consumption is free / ad-supported. Customers are not "paying" and those ads are usually the bottom of the barrel with regard to sleaziness or legality.
  - 9dev 8mo ago
    It’s still just a sales funnel for ads or subscriptions. Why do you think porn sites exist?
- 2duct 8mo ago
  Plenty of porn exists for free, posted online by models or digital artists. It's archived in places that circumvent copyright, don't require payment or accounts, and are easily accessible.
  - SiempreViernes 8mo ago
    Sure: models need to advertise to find buyers too, but there's certainly not as many models or rehosts if there's no money to be made anywhere.
    - DaedalusII 8mo ago
      pornography is not a profitable industry. even famous participants like 'mia khalifa' only made GBP9.5k (USD 12.8k) lifetime earnings. The average onlyfans has about 21 fans, with an average subscription price of $7.20. the future of the industry is probably ai slop, personalised ai, and so on one of the purposes of the porn industry in 00s was money laundering: cash only, large stores with no CCTV, very sparse records, not possible to objectively value why a dvd was being sold for $85
      - defrost 8mo ago
        The industry is profitable .. the onlyfans founder is now worth circa $8 billion. Being grist in the mill of that industry, however, only leads to being ground up for the consumption of others.
big-and-small 8mo ago
> A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. Porn is not just political information about human right abuses, government overreach or heavily censored overview of concentration camps for "group X". People can live just fine with government censorship buying into any kind of propaganda. Kids would find a way to access porn though. Whatever it VPNs, tor or USB stick black market. Government cant even win war on drugs and you expect them to successfully ban porn. What a joke.
- hellojesus 8mo ago
  It's as easy as parents keeping the default router password, a kid logging in and then setting up port forwarding to a device on a port that they're running a server on, tied to their current residential ip, and then pinging their friends that ip and allowing them all to connect and download whatever files or upload whatever files. The peer-to-peer network could really start establishing itself in ephemeral and very hard to track ways. All you need is one kid with access to a vpn to torrent without copyright concerns to seed the network. Or one kid to get its parents to buy a domain and use that as an anchor so that the dns to ip is set behind the scenes for the peers.
logicchains 8mo ago
Even China hasn't been remotely successful at banning porn, and it already has the great firewall and porn is illegal there.
LtWorf 8mo ago
Oh but brainrot would not be blocked, how would poor Meta keep making money otherwise? What will be blocked are news outlets that don't agree with the government propaganda.

blackqueeriroh 8mo ago

It’s very odd to hear you complain about age verification but then be fine with ruining the porn industry