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Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

arstechnica.com

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Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#31

Post by lucianbr »

andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?

One thing all the crypto coins show is that a central authority has its uses. What if you want to fix a bug in the protocol or upgrade it? What if due to some mistake you are identified as underage when you are over, or over when you are underage? There's nobody to reach out to.

A zero-trust protocol or computer system is all well and good, for some uses at least. A zero-trust society will not work. Or at least it will be significantly worse than societies with trust.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#32

Post by llamaimperative »

lelandfe wrote: post #24
williamcotton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, DMVs could issue IDs with Common Access Card support, a cheap and widely available digital system used by the DoD. Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew we were interacting with a real person and not a chat bot?

…on Pornhub? Why does it matter?

I suspect they’re saying elsewhere on the internet. Matters for obvious reasons.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#33

Post by leetrout »

znpy wrote: post #16
Veliladon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Apple has the tech already with their digital driver's license initiative. It's probably more secure at stopping kids from accessing porn because it involves the on device FaceID authentication of the ID holder and could be verified and attested to each session vs just punching in a DL or CC number.

You're still trusting apple. It's all fun and games, until it isn't. Apple is what it is today, might not be the same Apple tomorrow.

That is probably the goal.

We need only look at... (checks notes) every other profit driven company (thats all of them) to see how this will go when quarterly earnings are flat and/or falling

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#34

Post by ramses0 »

This seems to be a Trojan horse for even further "personalizing" (de-anonymizing) the internet.

If one site can require FaceID (or any sort of attestation) then either some, all, or arbitrary sites can require the same.

I'm in the same boat... banking would be nice to support "non-anonymously", but why are they chasing against porn sites vs finance sites?

It's such a slippery slope imagining requiring "age verification" for dating sites/apps, then same-same for access to email, then it's only going to be news sites that don't require age verification.

(Whoops! Except NYT, WaPo, and the rest all have paywalls, and there's Fox ~News~ propaganda waiting in the wings to be "free, but needs your identity")

Slippery slippery slopes here, and it must be intentional.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#36

Post by Broken_Hippo »

skhunted wrote: post #2

[flagged]

I literally cannot remember the last time I had to show proof of age to buy tobacco or alcohol. I'm middle aged - mid 40s, in fact - and places don't ask.

If I order alcohol, the reason I'm showing ID is to prove that yes, it was me that ordered it instead of someone else (and I'm showing my ID at the liquor store).

I've only bought porn twice - once a video and once a magazine full of naked men. I didn't get carded either time and this was back in the 90s. One of those times, I was 17.

And if I needed to verify ID online (for payments, etc), I have a secure way of doing that, which folks in these states simply do not have. The websites don't need to keep any information on file either. And this is the very thing that pornhub is objecting to. If they were rolling out age verification that already has some of this in place, it'd be a different story.

And a sidenote: I don't think it is all that wrong for a 17 year old to see what naked people look like. The rest of us need to be mature enough to make sure that young folks have a reasonable view of porn, including things like 'this isn't realistic and physically difficult for these reasons." A lot of so-called 'harm' is simply that we - the adults in the room - haven't held up our end of teaching.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#37

Post by 7thpower »

Why are people so upset?

Because this is not like ID’ing for cigarettes and alcohol.

Largely speaking, people do not want there highly personal, sensitive activity and preferences to be attached to their identity and maintained by some entity that either may get hacked or may use it in any number of nefarious ways.

Once again, porn may be on the forefront of pushing technology (VPNs) mainstream. I’m (Much more nuanced takes in the article. Ars is one of my favorite publications for this reason)

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#38

Post by affinepplan »

rescripting wrote: post #18
Veliladon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this is a feature not a bug for the lawmakers who wrote the laws. They want databases of PII to be breached in order for porn consumers to be publicly named and shamed without the political blowback or getting their hands dirty.

The first thing that would happen is that the breach would be scoured for politicians names. They’d be just as vulnerable to this kind of blow back.

I suspect that scouring would find approximately 535 congressmen and 200 million americans.

seriously, how much "blow back" could there possibly be to revealing someone has frequented PH?

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#39

Post by sofixa »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #13
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?

I think German id cards already support a zero-knowledge proof of age.

It's the whole of the EU, it's the new EU ID card standard, with biometrics and NFC on the card itself.

I'm not aware of any large scale user implementations of the protocol though (people have been getting compatible ID cards for years, but I don't know any software that uses them outside of probably cigarette vending machines in Spain). Do you know any?

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#40

Post by lucianbr »

rescripting wrote: post #18
Veliladon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this is a feature not a bug for the lawmakers who wrote the laws. They want databases of PII to be breached in order for porn consumers to be publicly named and shamed without the political blowback or getting their hands dirty.

The first thing that would happen is that the breach would be scoured for politicians names. They’d be just as vulnerable to this kind of blow back.

So for example if you were known to have paid for sex with a porn star, your political career would definitely be over. Right?

Or how it never turns out that politicians who pushed for persecution of gays are gay themselves. Ever.

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