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US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

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Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#121

Post by stvltvs »

ahtihn wrote: post #110
ineptech wrote: post #78

Would it not be reasonable and safe and private to implement age verification through login.gov? An Oauth implementation that knows your identity and age can produce a verifiable token that attests your age but not identity. The only way your identity would leak would be if both the porn site and the oauth retain the tokens (which they would both claim not to do else no one would use this), and the attacker gets acce…

You need something like Verifiable Credentials to do this properly imo. You don't want something like OAuth because the login service knows which websites you're requesting the login from.

Whatever technical solution is implemented needs to:

1. Not inform the authentication provider about which websites you're visiting.

2. Not inform the websites about your meat space identity.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#122

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

A note on what the future will look like and how we'll get there.

    [Justice] Thomas’s invention of “partially protected” speech, 
    that somehow means you can burden those for which it
    is protected, is particularly insidious because
    it’s infinitely expandable. Any time the government wants
    to burden speech, it can simply argue that the burden is built
    into the right itself—making First Amendment protection
    vanish exactly when it’s needed most.

    This isn’t constitutional interpretation; 
    it’s constitutional gerrymandering.
ref: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/27/the-conservatives-on-the...

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#123

Post by stvltvs »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #120
TZubiri wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in anti-porn and anti-vpn startups. If you suggest teenagers will buy VPNs and we should monetize that, it should set some alarms to question your ethos.

I think plenty of legal adults have zero interest in having a link tied to their porn consumption. The never ending stream of data leakage announcements should make it clear that if the data is collected, you have to assume it will become public. VPN at least puts a layer of indirection on that.

Agreed. As an adult, I would use a VPN to bypass ID requirements to preserve my privacy.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#124

Post by pyuser583 »

I have kids and try very hard to keep them from inappropriate material online.

The real dangers aren’t dedicated porn sites, but poorly managed social media sites. You can’t just block the domain.

In many cases, the bad material comes from peers. Kids have always talked about “bad” things, but the internet super charges it.

I generally support these efforts, but I’m also very cynical they help.

Politicians focus on the problems they control, like rules for sites that rigorously follow the laws and fit in a clear category. They care far less about the grey areas where the most harm is often done.

I think this is a good thing. I’d feel a lot better if these efforts were combined with rigorous privacy protections.

For example, third party identity verification services should be civilly liable for privacy breeches, and required to carry insurance to meet the obligations.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#125

Post by reverendsteveii »

bilbo0s wrote: post #50
brianbest101 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what counts as obscene is not well defined. Forget newspapers you could have to age gate Wikipedia

I understand the point you're trying to make. However, I wanted to point out that Wikipedia being one-third porn/obscene content is unlikely in the extreme.

Not if I get to pick what's obscene

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#126

Post by Rebelgecko »

TZubiri wrote: post #113
GameOfKnowing wrote: post #99

Hey— performer & small site owner here. Most of the hypothetical cases in the media (and these comments) relate to Pornhub, OF, etc— companies that definitely can afford to implement age verification even if it hurts their bottom line. This totally misses the vast majority of porn sites that are very small, operate on licensed technology that may not even be maintained, and would have their ~low-5-digit annual income…

As a performer and small site owner, am I to understand that you usually sell sexual material and you don't perform any check to make sure that they are not kids? How are you making sure that users are of age other than the "I am 18: ENTER" button? Maybe you take credit cards and can check their age through that? Do you take crypto or wallets that don't require 18+?

Do CC issuers report the owner's age?

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#127

Post by hooverd »

superfrank wrote: post #77
cchance wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because .... ITS A SLIPPERY SLOPE, that the republicans in charge and religious right wing have shown they are perfectly OK with pushing for, shit its funny how project 2025 is like 60% implemented and people are still acting like its all some conspiracy and this weird religious right wing shit isnt actually happening

"IT IS A SLIPPERY SLOPE! First we gave women rights, then black people rights, and now we're trying to give trans people rights and rights to illegal immigrants!" To be clear, I support all of those things, but the point I'm making is that saying it's a slippery slope is a bad argument because A) the next steps are often based on opinion and not fact and B) what one person sees as a slippery slope another person sees…

sometimes you can clearly see the slope being greased

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#128

Post by theschmed »

pyuser583 wrote: post #124

I have kids and try very hard to keep them from inappropriate material online. The real dangers aren’t dedicated porn sites, but poorly managed social media sites. You can’t just block the domain. In many cases, the bad material comes from peers. Kids have always talked about “bad” things, but the internet super charges it. I generally support these efforts, but I’m also very cynical they help. Politicians focus on t…

I tend to think that this challenge posed by "mixed" domains, partly unobjectionable but partly inappropriate, will only become more prevalent. A couple of thoughts:

1. Filtering at the DNS level will never be enough. You'll always need to have the capability for the browser or user agent to do filtering, since the user agent has the context to know the full URI as well as other things needed for filtering. The OS admin (parent, school IT admin etc) will need to be able to block all user agents except the ones that have the reporting and filtering capabilities tuned to the admin's requirements. This is the direction Windows is heading, but it is very rough.

2. I wonder if more domains could do what Google, Bing, Youtube etc do and permit a safe version to be requested at the DNS level. I personally would like to be able to do so with Reddit, Twitter and more.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#129

Post by ineptech »

stvltvs wrote: post #121
ahtihn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need something like Verifiable Credentials to do this properly imo. You don't want something like OAuth because the login service knows which websites you're requesting the login from.

Whatever technical solution is implemented needs to: 1. Not inform the authentication provider about which websites you're visiting. 2. Not inform the websites about your meat space identity.

Unless I'm missing something, what I'm describing satisfies both of these (unless one or both parties are malicious).

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#130

Post by nickff »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #126
TZubiri wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a performer and small site owner, am I to understand that you usually sell sexual material and you don't perform any check to make sure that they are not kids? How are you making sure that users are of age other than the "I am 18: ENTER" button? Maybe you take credit cards and can check their age through that? Do you take crypto or wallets that don't require 18+?

Do CC issuers report the owner's age?

I am not sure whether the issuers report that to the processors (though I doubt it), but you cannot get that information from a processor.
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