Live data from Hacker News

PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

kslnewsradio.com

591–600 of 1001 posts

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#591
post #564
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh it's definitely not just the ultra religious conservatives who are raising issues with pornography. I see a lot more "health bro influencer"/Andrew Tate types warn against watching porn because they think it makes people weak minded, which I would agree with when it turns into an addiction and actually impacts your ability to form real life relationships.

You might see a lot of that personally, but the Utah legislature has a dearth of "health bro influencer" types, especially in its Senate. The chief sponsor of the bill went to BYU.[1] The co-sponsor of the bill went to BYU [2] [1] https://senate.utah.gov/sen/WEILET/ [2] https://house.utleg.gov/rep/PULSIS/ Edit: spacing

I didn’t suggest if it is happening in Utah it isn’t for religious reasons, but I don’t think criticism of porn is strictly a religious issue.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're equating porn with sexuality. I'm a grown man and I find most of what's on the front page of PornHub to be deeply disturbing. I see racism, misogyny, incest, even simulated assault. In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless. And I don't get what you're suggesting in saying hiding stuff does…

> In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless. There's evidence that porn reduces the rate of sexual assaults [0]. [0] Evidence Mounts: More Porn, Less Sexual Assault. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/2016...

Your article claims that rape levels have deceased with the expansion of internet pornography but that's statistically untrue, as they've almost doubled: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible...

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's addictive for one. There are increasing number of support groups for men who are struggling with pornography use and for their spouses in dealing with having a dependant partner. It creates a space for people to explore and normalise their distressing sexual interests without questioning the root causes. Producers will often intentionally seek out vulnerable young women and groom them with promises of fame and r…

> It's addictive for one. Citation needed. Porn addiction doesn't exist [0]. [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/porn-addiction

"It seems that POPU (Problematic Online Porn Usage) is not only one subtype of hypersexual disorder, but currently the most prevalent since it also frequently involves masturbation. Although this is difficult to accurately determine given the anonymity and accessibility factors that make pornography use today so pervasive, we can at least confirm that the patron of consumption for pornography has changed for roughly the last decade. ... As far as we know, a number of recent studies support this entity as an addiction with important clinical manifestations such as sexual dysfunction and psychosexual dissatisfaction. Most of the existing work is based off on similar research done on substance addicts, based on the hypothesis of online pornography as a ‘supranormal stimulus’ akin to an actual substance that, through continued consumption, can spark an addictive disorder. However, concepts like tolerance and abstinence are not yet clearly established enough to merit the labeling of addiction, and thus constitute a crucial part of future research. For the moment, a diagnostic entity encompassing out of control sexual behavior has been included in the ICD-11 due to its current clinical relevance, and it will surely be of use to address patients with these symptoms that ask clinicians for help."

Porn addiction has not been classified as an addiction in and of itself because researchers are unsure that it is its own addiction, or a subset of other sexual related addictions and disorders. So it is highly likely that porn is addictive, but medical professionals are hesitant to declare "porn addiction" as a diagnosis without seeing if it is separated from other problematic sexual behaviors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6352245/

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#594
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To respond to your edit here are some general statistics about sexual assault in the US: https://legaljobs.io/blog/sexual-assault-statistics/ In terms of increase with the availability of pornography, take a look at this chart: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible... You can see that the number of rape reports have almost doubled since the invention of web pornography.

Not sure why this got a downvote. I was going to say that this shows only reports without estimating the proportion of unreported rape over time (I tried for the last ~10 minutes to find it myself but no dice), but it's a constructive comment.

It got a downvote because I was speaking against pornography in a heavily male and internet dependant environment.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pornography is that which harms the soul. That's true of all people not just minors. The question then becomes what should be classified as pornography. Justice Stewart famously said "I know it when I see it". My definition is close: "pornography is that which harms my soul". That means that what is porn will differ for different people and probably by age as well.

Then don't watch it. Let us have ours.

Which, in case it wasn't clear, is exactly what I'm saying. What harms my soul differs from what harms your soul. The government should not be in the business of preventing the harm to one soul.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#596
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh it's definitely not just the ultra religious conservatives who are raising issues with pornography. I see a lot more "health bro influencer"/Andrew Tate types warn against watching porn because they think it makes people weak minded, which I would agree with when it turns into an addiction and actually impacts your ability to form real life relationships.

Andrew Tate is a pornographer.

Very likely he’s a hypocrite but that doesn’t mean pornography can’t have unintended side effects

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's addictive for one. Citation needed. Porn addiction doesn't exist [0]. [0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/porn-addiction

It would fall under Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder[0] in ICD-10. [1] Pornography Addiction as a unique pathology is still not recognised but the issue is still young. We can see that it's an issue in that more than half of US divorce cases mention compulsive pornography usage. [2] You can read more about Pornography Addiction and what I mean by that over at Wikipedia. [3] You can see support groups for self-ide…

Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder is not an addiction. The Wikipedia article that you cited begins with the following sentence: “Pornography addiction is the popular but unscientific[5] application of an addiction model to the use of pornography.”

[5] Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You Should, Too. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2018...

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#598

An identity provider can make verified age one of the claims on an OAuth token. It removes anonymity, but at least you don't have to provide your personal details to everybody on the internet demanding age verification. You provide those details to your trusted identity provider, they provide the claim of your age to the website. With that in place we can easily make beer, liquor, marijuana and tobacco sales on the i…

A much better solution than was suggested by PornHub: > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Fingerprinting is not and should not be the sanctioned way of identifying people. On the engineering side, it is a horrible hack. On the ethical side, it is much worse to ( attempt to) fingerprint since it tells PornHub waaay more than just age.

[deleted]

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s such a strange dichotomy in these conversations. 1. Porn shouldn’t be available to kids and it’s on the vendors legally to ensure that. 2. Porn should be unrestricted, it’s up to parents to do something about it. What I can’t understand is if the people in camp 2 are so unashamed of the porn advocacy then why is age verification such a big deal? If it’s not a big deal then verifying your age shouldn’t phase y…

Because when buying alcohol, you can for the most part (outside of online purchases, but even then the courier can check an ID upon delivery hypothetially) verify it fairly easily. With online porn, the scale and complications doing it put a much bigger burden on the providers. Additionally porn has a much bigger stigma than alcohol, so keeping record of what you watch, especially if you're into something more niche…

> With online porn, the scale and complications doing it put a much bigger burden

This could be very easily done at the ISP level for the whole connection. (I'm talking best effort not a perfect implementation)

Why not just block all "Adult" content by default and allow the buyer to opt in (both temporarily via password, and permanently).

Then it would be a decision each household could easily make about what they want.

edit: I love the downvotes without rebuttal. Reminder that the downvote in this community is not "I disagree with you"

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pornography is that which harms the soul. That's true of all people not just minors. The question then becomes what should be classified as pornography. Justice Stewart famously said "I know it when I see it". My definition is close: "pornography is that which harms my soul". That means that what is porn will differ for different people and probably by age as well.

>Pornography is that which harms the soul. I believe they were asking for research or something measurable, not platitudes.

My point being that it's not measurable, which is another reason for governments to not be involved.
Post reply on HN