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Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

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Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#111

Fuck these prudes. It's time to stop accepting the demonization of sex by religious extremists. If we don't fight for our rights we forfeit them.

[flagged]

Are you talking about these bills? They have nothing to do with "what consenting adults do and possibly criminalizing LGBT again".

As the article says, adults can "disable the filters...through passcodes".

And even children are allowed to bypass the filters, if their parents permit it: "Providing such a passcode to a child would be forbidden, except when done by a parent."

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#112

The most a device maker should be implementing is looking for RTA headers and then checking what options the device owner/purchaser set. This is not in any way a new concept. Implement child accounts and implement checks for RTA headers. This delegates the responsibility entirely to the device owner to raise their own children and website operators to set a simple header. This would be trivial to implement on both en…

> If a website is serving user-generated or adult content and not adding RTA headers then fine the crap out of them

How could Utah fine a website from a foreign country?

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#113

The most a device maker should be implementing is looking for RTA headers and then checking what options the device owner/purchaser set. This is not in any way a new concept. Implement child accounts and implement checks for RTA headers. This delegates the responsibility entirely to the device owner to raise their own children and website operators to set a simple header. This would be trivial to implement on both en…

> If a website is serving user-generated or adult content and not adding RTA headers then fine the crap out of them How could Utah fine a website from a foreign country?

[deleted]

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#114
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn has its fair share of issues with human trafficking, exploitation etc. But to label all porn as not good is not correct either in my opinion. If, as an example, you find a porn account of a consentual couple who uploads videos on their own terms - why would that be bad?

Also who defines 'porn'. Is porn any photo that shows nudity, or where do you draw the line on vanilla videos vs more extreme. You might end up with devices blocking all photos of a woman topless, or naked men, even art. Does Michelangelo's David statue get his privates covered or blocked? Or like in China where they increasing block things like picture/videos of women eating bananas as that is taken as sexual (and t…

If we are including all fetishes and kinks, then any photo, video or drawing that shows feet is porn. The internet has a massive foot fetish. Some people are aroused by eyes. So any photo, video or drawing that contains eyes is porn. Some people are into ... I mean, I could keep going but it's already silly.

There used to be clear lines drawn for porn penetration, oral copulation, etc... but those lines have been quite blurred. Now anything lewd could be porn and just about anything could be lewd in the eyes of the beholder. There's some case law that tries to put bullet-point requirements on this but is still somewhat subjective even when stare decisis is utilized. A considerable amount of artistic content on DeviantArt could be considered lewd by current US standards.

Overall I agree with you. The government should stay out of it. The tech industry should also stay out of it. Just add a header for URL's that may contain user-generated content and let the clients decide what actions to take or not take on that header.

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#115
post #4

> One of these anti-pornography bills was passed into law in 2021 in Utah but cannot go into effect unless five additional states pass similar laws — a provision included to prevent Big Tech companies from isolating the state after passing the law. Ok so they have to isolate five small states instead? I don't think the tech companies will worry until California, New York, or Texas pass this law.

There have already been at least 3 other states trying to make this law. They've been discussed here on HN. I do not have links handy. So they may very well be on the path to their goals.

[Edit] Here [1] is the one for the UK and here [2] is the one for Louisiana. Partially related is the fight against PornHub [3]. Here [4] is the one for Arkansas and here [5] is Canada. There is at least one more, I could not find it. I want to say it was Oklahoma.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501987 [UK]

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34262400 [Louisiana]

[3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31724701 [PornHub]

[4] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789752 [Arkansas]

[5] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6097746 [Canada]

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#116
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion controls people. Whether you think it's a lie is up to you & subjective. Laws are based on someone else's ideas and those ideas control you.

Well given religions are all different and only one could be true, it's more correct to say they're all a lie. One might be true. However, as old ones have died away and new ones will be created and the current ones evolve it's not even possible to say that any one religion is subjectively true to itself.

They have different beliefs, but it's all the same God.

You can't know enough in this lifetime to judge them to be objective or subjective lies. Just getting through the magisterium is more reading than one lifetime, let alone the other old judeo-christian 'usual suspects' faiths.

Replacing your category of God and religion with 'its all a lie' is very dangerous and distasteful to read.

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you talking about these bills? They have nothing to do with "what consenting adults do and possibly criminalizing LGBT again". As the article says, adults can "disable the filters...through passcodes". And even children are allowed to bypass the filters, if their parents permit it: "Providing such a passcode to a child would be forbidden, except when done by a parent."

Of course they can! For now.

Next step: this porn type needs to be filtered out

Eventual step: all LGBT+ material isn't legal in this state and must be filtered.

Also: "Providing such a passcode to a child would be forbidden, except when done by a parent."

Better hope no one posts it online. Won't someone think of the children!

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be bad in terms of the outcomes for consumers even if it's produced ethically. Imagine all junk food and sugary soda was produced with sustainable farming and renewable energy. It could still be the case that it leads to worse health outcomes for the population, which seems like grounds for regulation to me. I don't really have a position on this, but it seems easy to imagine how someone could.

> It could still be the case that it leads to worse health outcomes for the population, which seems like grounds for regulation to me. I don't see how that would be grounds for regulation, though. Grounds for education, perhaps.

If you say "I don't see the grounds for banning or regulating porn" but you mean "I disagree with the concept of consumer protection regulation altogether", you're wasting people's time.

Just say the more general thing in the first place so people don't have to bother trying to argue the finer points of the specific case.

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Where is the line between porn and art, and how would it remain a consistently enforceable standard? Since early times, through the Greeks to now, art celebrates nudity and sometimes depicts static (because earlier civilizations had no video) representations of sex and violence mixing in order to tell a story (uhh … Persephone and Hades, much? or Zeus turning into a thousand animals to lure women then rape them). Whe…

The line is where it empirically stops hurting the protected class. We don't do empirical evidence based policy on social stuff anymore (science in social politica is mostly rhetoric lately), so it's pointless for me to type this out, but that is the answer to establishing a boundary.

When teenagers and young adults stop measurably falling off their path in life (chosen according to their own wishes) then we can say that age is the right age for teenagers to be allowed to opt-in to porn.

This is not to condemn the average joe who is unaffected by porn, but to distance the innocent from getting addicted.

Alcohol, cars, guns and literal sex all have minimum ages. The controversy around porn is more rabid and faith-based than logical.

The government doesnt need any new tools to do it, too. Just legally require porn providers to accept a one-off credit card verification payment or 2factor phone auth or a gift card, to establish that the user is old enough to do those basic tasks. If the teenager uses a parents card or phone, the parent will find out eventually and it will solve itself.

But we all know the gov will try to implement more control than that. And that will kill the idea dead, before it begins.

Re: Anti-porn bills could force device makers to censor sexual material

#120
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well given religions are all different and only one could be true, it's more correct to say they're all a lie. One might be true. However, as old ones have died away and new ones will be created and the current ones evolve it's not even possible to say that any one religion is subjectively true to itself.

They have different beliefs, but it's all the same God. You can't know enough in this lifetime to judge them to be objective or subjective lies. Just getting through the magisterium is more reading than one lifetime, let alone the other old judeo-christian 'usual suspects' faiths. Replacing your category of God and religion with 'its all a lie' is very dangerous and distasteful to read.

Reading someone defending religion is distasteful to read, yet here we are.

Edit: I shouldn't have posted this as I was not adding to the conversation, just defending the GP's position. I'll leave it anyway though.

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