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

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

#891

[flagged]

The porn industry exploits vulnerable women and ruins their lives, forces them to do stuff they never signed for and much more. You trying to paint this issue as a white and black political thing makes you dismiss all the victims from this industry. You're basically dismissing it as "if you're part of this specific political team you should support/be against this"

> The porn industry exploits vulnerable women and ruins their lives, forces them to do stuff they never signed for and much more.

It's absurd disinformation to paint all pornography this way. For only the most obvious example, please explain in detail how porn studios only featuring men do this?

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

#892
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your proposal is that every access to porn must be forever associated with your personal phone number?

Well... if you pay for this stuff, you're already having a credit card involved (for example. Maybe you're buying gift cards, and age gating can happen there!). If you're not.... maybe the decimation of free porn is not a bad thing for the universe. I do believe in privacy rights, but... free porn just doesn't feel like a must-exist thing in the sense we are all talking about. I do think that there's a universe where…

>I do believe in privacy rights, but... free porn just doesn't feel like a must-exist thing in the sense we are all talking about.

...Well gee golly gosh, did you ask anyone else in the room? Or did you unilaterally decide what's best for everyone else?

And clearly you don't support privacy rights if you're willing to turn around and hand everyone else's off. Talk about saying one thing and doing something completely different. The turn of phrase this brings to mind is "Stop pissing on my shoes, and trying to convince me it's raining."

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

#893
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. 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.…

>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.

Is Reddit targeted to children? My assumption has always been that due to the nature of having intermingled NSFW content, lack of content filters, or literally any other control that Reddit was squarely aimed at older users.

>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".

Tobacco is a lot less subjective of a thing than 'inappropriate content' or 'porn' and its bad health effects are actually substantiated. Is fine art porn? Is a naked person porn? It might be to you, it isn't to me. Who gets to decide what is porn? The government? Religious activists?

>I said companies like reddit should design things such that filters work. If you don't need filtering, you'd be unaffected.

I would be affected because there is now a whole system that dictates what content is. How does one do that? How much does it cost? Is it my responsibility to determine that? The site hosts? What if one host has a different labeling system? It's not simple. It's regulatory bloat that would exist solely because people who popped kids out don't want to actually parent.

>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.

If reddit wants to implement that, that's fine with me. What OP said and what I responded to was this

"I think this is a poor solution; a more empowering one would be *to develop a standard for content categorization and require commercial websites and commercially developed browsers (so all of them that are in common use) to implement content blocking via e.g. header exchange*, with criminal penalties for negligently providing pornography without the correct headers (have some provision for vandalism when good-faith moderation is in place). Then parents actually could just configure their OS or browser for what kinds of content should be allowed."

>The problem is that parental controls increasingly cannot reasonably exist.

You can black list the reddit domain right now. How do they not exist? It might not exist in the form that you want, but that's life. I can't have the government force movie theaters to show edited versions of movies so they are kid appropriate. Some stuff just isn't for kids.

> 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.

Reddit, for the most part, does not provide content.

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

#894

Multiple issues with this. It starts off with arbitrary definitions of what pornography is ( https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0287.html ): "nipple of the female breast" You can suck on it when you are a baby, but god forbid you ever take a look at it again before you are married. What's wrong with these people? Even public nudity laws differ from city to city (e.g. in California), so clearly, people aren't al…

That list doesn't seem particularly arbitrary. It's basically "nudity or sex", which is what you'd expect.

Traditionally, obscenity laws have been extremely vague. Having a fairly clear list of what counts is an improvement.

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

#895
post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just gave it a once over - This is precisely what I was talking about - This is a bill which prohibits drag shows which appeal to a prurient interest from being open to all ages. How on earth is this "going after trans people". This is "Don't let kids into highly sexualized events - events which have lately allowed underage people to attend" This seem reasonable to me, and even if its not reasonable, it is hardly "go…

The issue is the way it's defined and the language in the law. What defines "drag"? As that legislation is currently written, it can be interpreted to be someone simply appearing in public. That aside, though, I don't see how banning things like drag queen storytime (which has happened locally here) are somehow a ban on sexualized events. How is that sexualized?

here is what the bill says :

"'Adult cabaret performance' means a performance in a location other than an adult cabaret that features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration

(1) It is an offense for a person to engage in an adult cabaret performance: (A) On public property; or (B) In a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult."

so this is not a ban on drag queen story hour: it is expressly a ban on sexual performances on public property or in front of minors. Now, if a drag queen story hour became sexualized, it could be criminal. With this language though, I seems to me that it would not criminalize a drag queen story hour where the participants were modestly dressed and did not do anything sexual in nature.

This legislation does not allow the possibility of someone being arrested for just being trans in public - It is explicitly banning performances.

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

#896

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole much? Comparing Utah to the Middle East is a bit disingenuous.

Well, both regions are deserts occupied in majority by religious zealots of a single ethnic group that believe in polygamy and their economy is primarily driven by natural resource exports (oil for the Middle East; gold, other metals, and agricultural products for Utah). I don't think the comparison is that far off. Utah is 85% white and 60% Mormon, so... The only reason that Utah isn't whiter and more Mormon is due…

Just about the only point you made that was accurate was about Utah being a desert.

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

#897

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?

[flagged]

You posted this 6 times in this thread. That's excessive and HN readers consider it spamming, so please don't do that kind of thing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it not interently protected speech? If you are going to make exceptions to the first admendment for safety can you prove the danger explicitly? Why not the 2nd admendment?

So is that a “no, I’m not aware of any cases holding that either”?

What?

I'm not arguing legal cases I'm arguing the gp's first point.

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

#899
post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>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. Is Reddit targeted to children? My assumption has always been that due to the nature of having intermingled NSFW content, lack of content f…

> Is Reddit targeted to children? My assumption has always been that due to the nature of having intermingled NSFW content, lack of content filters, or literally any other control that Reddit was squarely aimed at older users.

Among other child-oriented boards, they have a teenagers board with 3 million subscribers, so evidently, yes.

> Is it my responsibility to determine that? The site hosts?

The site host, given that they're the ones providing adult material in a commercial context.

> What if one host has a different labeling system?

I proposed we should create a standard system for labeling and mandate its use for commercial sites that offer adult material, just like we did with TV. Browsers from commercial entities (i.e. Chrome and its variants, Safari, and Firefox) would be required to implement the filter settings, just as TVs must contain a v-chip.

> It's regulatory bloat that would exist solely because people who popped kids out don't want to actually parent.

It's requiring site operators to provide the metadata needed for parents to be able to effectively parent without the solution being "lol just don't let your kid use any website at all".

> I can't have the government force movie theaters to show edited versions of movies so they are kid appropriate. Some stuff just isn't for kids.

But we can force movie theaters to provide ratings of movies and require them to bar children from watching any pornographic films they show. Currently companies self-enforce with ratings, but that's because if they didn't, they were going to have it forced upon them. The problem here is that we don't have any kind of rating system for web content, and clearly tech companies aren't going to develop one on their own, so it's reasonable to make them develop one.

> Reddit, for the most part, does not provide content.

Of course they do. They don't make it, but they're the ones providing it, and they make plenty of money doing so.

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

#900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a constitutional republic that got taken over by a 51% attack It's a state that was literally created to be a place for Mormons because they were a persecuted religious minority ran out of every other state and it was a huge desert wasteland nobody else wanted. It's only due to huge influxes of immigration, especially from the South, that Utah is... checks notes only 85% white and 60% Mormon. So it's like less…

Persecuted because Mormons refused to respect American laws. Yes if someone starts a cult that does illegal things they don't get to claim religious freedom or cry about persecution.

What laws would those be exactly?
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