Live data from Hacker News

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

kslnewsradio.com

881–890 of 1001 posts

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

#881
post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're kind of missing the point here. Parts of reddit are fine. Kids should be able to participate in forums about children's interests. The problem is a site is comingling children's forums and porn in a way where filtering is unreasonably difficult. It's reasonable to demand that a company that's in the business of hosting forums dedicated to children's topics (e.g. /r/teenagers or /r/roblox) and also hosting foru…

>You're kind of missing the point here. Parts of reddit are fine. Kids should be able to participate in forums about children's interests. The problem is a site is comingling children's forums and porn in a way where filtering is unreasonably difficult. I'm not missing the point at all. Reddit is a product. Your job as parent is to evaluate whether or not a product is appropriate for your child. You know that Reddit…

Reddit is a company that has products targeted toward both children and adults. If they want to do that, they should act like any other business and ensure that children aren't allowed access to products that are only for adults, or at least enable parents to make that decision. Grocery stores are free to sell cigarettes and alcohol along with candy, but they're required to not sell the former products to children. We don't just say "don't let your child go to the store alone".

> It's absurd and entitled to believe that I should have to jump through hoops because you want your child to have access to a website that it sounds like is inappropriate for them.

Where did I suggest you should have to jump through hoops? I said companies like reddit should design things such that filters work. If you don't need filtering, you'd be unaffected. Similar to how that little "TV-MA" pops up at the beginning of a TV show; every TV in the US market can be configured to block content above a desired rating level, and broadcasters are required to include the rating in their signal. I don't see how this would be so onerous to require a similar standard for businesses providing content online, particularly when that's information they already categorize out of politeness to their customers anyway.

> It's not reasonable to expect a company to filter content based on your personal understanding of porn.

I didn't suggest they should filter anything; I suggested they should label content and that the industry should be regulated to use standard way to do this that parental control software can understand. There's already precedent for how to solve this problem in TVs. It can be done in a way that completely preserves privacy and only requires action from people who want to configure their client to have filtering. Note that I also suggested they should label content categories. The person configuring the client can decide which categories are appropriate.

Similarly, if they move their nsfw images that they've already categorized from i.redd.it to e.g. p.redd.it, DNS filtering could easily block them all while still allowing roblox memes, and users who don't care wouldn't have to do anything.

> I'm not opposed to parental controls, but if parental controls don't exist, don't pass laws to force them to.

The problem is that parental controls increasingly cannot reasonably exist. With something like TLS with Encrypted Client Hello and DNS-over-HTTPS, and with most sites being hosted on large CDNs, the choice becomes "block all of cloudflare etc." or "block nothing". It's not that much to ask that if a company wants to provide both adult-only and child-oriented content, they should at least provide usable metadata for which is which to make sure filters can work.

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

#882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems most people recognize that the proliferation of easily-available porn has been a detriment to society I have not heard of this consensus. Where can I find out about it?

Do you think porn has been good for society?

Probably. I suspect that quite a few people who in the past would satisfy their urges via actual physical sexual abuse find porn "good enough" to not bother, for one. Also, the average age at which teens first have sex has been rising steadily, which translates to fewer teen pregnancies etc.

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

#883

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Is this a States thing? That in the United States that nudity and pornography is "dangerous", yet in other cultures throughout Europe, it's not taken as seriously, nor does it have this overall "dangerous" tag to it (generally speaking that is. Prudish people trying to impose their will on others can be a world-wide phenomenon). And does this put a curb on explicit R rated movies that has nudity and acts of se…

Anything that can hijack the dopaminergic system should not be allowed to kids. Gambling, tiktok & smartphones in general, porn, drugs etc. We used to have shame as a societal mechanism to deal with these issues. It was shameful to be an alcoholic, which was how alcoholism was kept in check. The same way it was shameful in ancient Greece to surrender to your carnal urges. Shame is disappearing. Our societies are goin…

Our societies are going haywire....

We really need to get back to the good old days – you know the ones – where slavery was legal, women didn't have the right to vote, and homosexuality could be punished with forced sterilization.

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

#884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing this reference. > researchers are unsure that it is its own addiction Yes. Indeed, this is the reason experts object to the term “porn addiction”. Some “addicts” might be consuming a lot of porn, but that doesn't mean that porn is addictive --- just like how alcoholics use bottles a lot, but bottles are not addictive.

Let's hope that public discourse will continue and draw attention to the need for further research. I've been addicted to pornography myself and spoken with many men who say the same, as well as many women who have had their relationships and mental health destroyed by being partnered with people like myself. The current state of research and recognition is not always reflective of reality. I'd hope that anyone famil…

The fact that you were addicted to pornography means that you probably would have sought out and encountered lots of other people in the same problematic situation as yourself. I would look to your own tunnel vision as to why you tend to see it's perceived negative effects everywhere.

I'll take peer reviewed research over anecdotal data any day of the week.

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

#886

Pornography, social media, 24/7 news... will all be looked back on in history as having profound negative mental health effects, akin to how we today view smoking in the 1950s. There is a mountain of growing evidence that this is verifiably true. The exact means that Utah is using to provide ID check may be for debate, but the concept there should be an age restriction, liable to the ISP or the content provider, shou…

[deleted]

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

#887
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Holland beer and wine was allowed from 16 years of age and only spirits were 18+. Unfortunately a recent conservative government switched it all to 18+. I'm much older but I think 16 is old enough for a beer. I didn't when I were that age but I don't begrudge them their beer. And it's not like the law will stop it from happening anyway.

People in the US seem to be at higher risk than Europeans of catastrophic problem drinking (where alcohol use leads to a loss of employment, housing, marriage / social connections, etc). I have seen this with several European friends who relocated to the US and found their relationship with alcohol turning dark. My personal theory is that life in the states may be on average more stressful than in Europe, perhaps due…

This is true of western europe, but eastern europe is worse than the US in terms of drinking problems.

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

#888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because it's literally illegal for children to view porn Is this actually even true? So if my underage son finds a porn magazine in my house, it's "illegal" for him to look at it? That doesn't sound right. >Imagine if a liquor store just decided it was fine to let kids come in and purchase liquor and you said "Why is it the liquor store's responsibility to not sell booze to kids?" Imagine comparing going to a physic…

Yes it's true. Children can't go in a physical store and purchase porn anywhere. "Imagine comparing going to a physical location with no easy digital trace and buying something that is basically 100% socially acceptable to digitally tracking what kind of taboo and private porn someone wants to watch. " You're making excuses for allowing this. Just stop. The mental and physical health of children takes precedence over…

I don't know what you mean by "very very recently", because even online porn has been around for literally decades (it was on Usenet for a while before the web was a thing). I remember folders full of it on the BBSes I frequented as a teen in mid-90s.

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

#889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, would you be okay with the same kind of porn if it was all 100% simulated (but realistically enough to be indistinguishable from real stuff)?

That's an interesting point and thank you for raising it. Indeed I would not. I think it does come down to a moral issue then, which is related both to the core messages communicated and to the audience. In terms of violent media I can think of 3 ways of categorising it: A) media with a moral message abut the use of violence (self defence, save the innocent) B) purely whimsical (something like Doom) and C) explicitly…

Explicitly brutal material does have one educative characteristic.

It educates one on the depths of human depravity. It is good to ensure the little ones eventually become aware of the shit we have to deal with. Hiding it helps no one.

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

#890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me a prude. Call me old fashioned. Call me small minded. But watching a woman getting chocked while DPed in her anus while a half dozen men ejaculate on her is not the type of extra-curricular activity [1] I want my soon to be teenaged daughters' boyfriends interested in. Im just... overprotective I guess. [1] If anyone calls me out for knowing what's on the front page of all of these smut sites, guess what? We…

>But watching a woman getting chocked while DPed in her anus while a half dozen men ejaculate on her is not the type of extra-curricular activity [1] I want my soon to be teenaged daughters' boyfriends interested in. If this is consensual, it actually sounds rather fun. But it's interesting that the example is simply an amalgamation of relatively common things: * Choking is a common kink * Anal sex is a common sex ac…

Function composition is the essence of perversity.
Post reply on HN