this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
713 points (98.2% liked)

News

23406 readers
3333 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Pornhub has disabled its site in Texas to object to a state law that requires the company to verify the age of users to prevent minors from accessing the site.

Texas residents who visit the site are met with a message from the company that criticizes the state’s elected officials who are requiring them to track the age of users.

The company said the newly passed law impinges on “the rights of adults to access protected speech” and fails to pass strict scrutiny by “employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yep, I do agree with that part of the statement. The only porn they'll have access to will be completely unregulated and a haven for revenge porn and CP.

Pornhub themselves weren't amazing on that front to begin with, but they made more of an effort than most to try and clean that up due to regulatory pressures.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

The kind of sites who won't bother complying with Texas' age verification law because they already hosted all kinds of illegal shit are just going to explode in popularity further entrenching a depraved and violent subset of sexual abusers.

Anyway, I'm glad to see this sentiment echoed on Lemmy. Everywhere else it feels like people are thoughtlessly praising Pornhub and thinking this is a "big win."

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So you think that providing your ID to access porn is a good idea?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I think asking for ID online to view porn is practically unenforceable, which is why I'm of the opinion that a site like Pornhub will quickly be replaced by far more disreputable sites who will not follow the rules requiring IDs to view the porn.

Pornhub cutting off Texas just isn't as big of a win as people are making it out to be, imho, simply because its unenforceable and the kind of sites that are willing to ignore it probably have far worse on their sites to begin with. So those kind of sites will see their traffic drastically increase and men consuming porn in Texas will be exposed to far more violent and dangerous content. Pornhub is doing the right thing, sure, but it doesn't mean it's that simple.

Do people really think Texas is going to spend time playing whack-a-mole with every single random porn site on the internet? I don't.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Won't Texas just go to the next step and start forcing the ISPs to ban the sites starting a never ending game of whackamole until they just outright ban all porn at the ISP level with a way to add a site super easily and on demand.

At that point it's VPN only in which case you can access it all anyway

Edit: and of course the blanket isp ban will hit non porn things to, but that's the cost to save the children!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Court time costs money, and in each one of these cases, they'll have to start legal proceedings against every site, and then, if that doesn't work and then they'll have to sue each and every ISP for compliance. Taking it to court is a surefire way for the law to be shot down by the courts. Blocking at that level would undoubtedly run into Freedom of Speech issues.

  1. There are roughly 4 million adult sites on the internet. That's a lot of fucking court cases, especially when a bunch of these aren't even headquartered in the US.

  2. In Texas alone there are over 150 Internet Service Providers. While that's an easier number to target, it's far more likely to run into the 1st Amendment argument that blocking the site is blocking the freedom of speech of the ISP.

The reason they went with age verification was because it doesn't end up in 1st Amendment territory. Outright blocking the sites for non-compliance and taking them to court risks the court throwing out the law and saying its unconstitutional.

Texas can't even keep its power grid on, I have serious doubts they have the ability to achieve either of these things. Asking ISPs to wholesale block sites is about as difficult to enforce as age verification, which is basically unenforceable as it stands.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes. I don't explicitly like that you have to be verified to post content but it's very nice to have the default porn site to be much better protected.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Verifying your identity before posting potentially illegal content is a great deterrent against doing so, especially when it's original content.