Porn sites are banning Texas

I'm somewhat surprised that this hasn't occurred already. I suspect the reason is that there's not been a catalyzing event that governments usually need in order to make restrictions palatable to people.

This is probably designed to be that event. Enough people will buy the "think of the children" angle used to ban porn. And that legal framework can then be leveraged to regulate VPNs. First, to stop them from being used to bypass these porn restrictions, but then expanded to prevent content restriction bypassing, then to preventing online piracy, then preventing "subversive activities."

Pornography is at the vanguard of free speech.

Alternatively, how would you propose a porn site do age verification that doesn't involve every porn site having giant databases of IDs and user photos? Moreover, as the big - trying to do things right - sites have repeatedly stated, all you're doing is ensuring that the only sites minors can access are the ones that have little to no controls on content.

I get that you may feel that hardcore porn is bad for children - I think the issue here is that that's the only stuff kids can access because less hardcore stuff generally has more aggressive access controls - but the solution here is to explain what pornography is, and how it does or does not match reality, etc. Pretending it doesn't exist results in kids accessing it (because hormones and failure to monitor what your kids are doing online) and not understanding that it does not accurately reflect how real relationships or sex work. It's similar to "protecting" children from sex by pretending it doesn't exist, and making it really bad/sinful, which is super effective at enabling abusers.

How many people who are of age would hand over their personal information to a porn site unless they are already paying customers? Many people would not feel safe just handing over all of that information. They would lose both minors and adults who do not want to share that information.

I am curious, how would you suggest they roll out this digital check without hurting the users privacy? I have not seen a proposal that can scale across countries without becoming a privacy nightmare.

From my limited experience, most people are pretty onboard with blocking minors from accessing porn. The conflict always arises around the question of how you will achieve that.