Live data from Hacker News

Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

ellsberg.substack.com

41–50 of 1001 posts

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#41

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

Devils advocate: parents that are too busy or not tech savvy are helpless to block content without essentially forbidding their kids from using any connected device.

I run a pi-hole that blocks ads and porn, but that’s way beyond the technical capability of probably 95% of people. There are some commercial products but they are expensive and also take time and at least a little tech ability to set up.

… and of course any phone with 5G/LTE gets around this. Cellular is impossible to police.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#42
post #23

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

And we could call this way… zero-knowledge proof! :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof I bet we could even get a major phone OS vendor to support such a thing… https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...

Do we expect Apple to implement a special, privacy-preserving age proof for porn viewers? Apple hates porn, when it's on websites like Tumblr.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#43
post #41

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

Devils advocate: parents that are too busy or not tech savvy are helpless to block content without essentially forbidding their kids from using any connected device. I run a pi-hole that blocks ads and porn, but that’s way beyond the technical capability of probably 95% of people. There are some commercial products but they are expensive and also take time and at least a little tech ability to set up. … and of course…

That still seems better than the proposed cure. Connected devices are overrated.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#45

There was a NYT article a couple weeks ago about Chinese morality police doing mass arrests of erotica authors, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/world/asia/china-boys-lov... ( "Chinese Police Detain Dozens of Writers Over Gay Erotic Online Novels" ) [note article contains large images of erotica novel covers] But you'd *expect* that of the PRC; the US, wow, has it ever fallen fast and fallen hard.

[flagged]

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#46
Others have said this, I'm sure, but this will move past porn _quickly_. Once there is agreed-up age verification for pornography, much of the professional internet will require identity verification to do _anything_. This is one of the bigger nails in the coffin for the free internet, and this true whether or not you're happy with all the pornography out there.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#49
post #24

All these ID check laws are out of hand. Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids. Why would anyone trust some random blog with their ID? If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should), there needs to be a way to authenticate as over 18 without sending picture of your ID off to random 3rd parties, or giving actual personal details. I don’t want to give this data, and…

There was a thread on reddit asking the other day what about the modern world bothers you the most I actually considered this question and after thinking about it, despite everything going on, I think it boils down to lack of privacy as my biggest gripe in the modern world It’s such a tough concept to explain to the if you don’t have anything to hide crowd, but if someone wants to disappear, I don’t care if for good…

That's literally what EU privacy laws are about and guess what...

Anti government folk from the USA hated them and decided they were government overreach.

Re: Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

#50
post #43
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devils advocate: parents that are too busy or not tech savvy are helpless to block content without essentially forbidding their kids from using any connected device. I run a pi-hole that blocks ads and porn, but that’s way beyond the technical capability of probably 95% of people. There are some commercial products but they are expensive and also take time and at least a little tech ability to set up. … and of course…

That still seems better than the proposed cure. Connected devices are overrated.

What happens when their friends have them?

It is very hard for parents who aren’t tech savvy or are busy (single parents or both work) to police this stuff.

I’m playing devils advocate because if we pretend this isn’t a problem eventually governments will force onerous regulation. It is a problem. We need to come up with better solutions if we don’t want worse ones.

It’s devils advocate because I think while kids shouldn’t be looking at porn the brain rot shit is at least as bad and possibly worse. Kids YouTube is a lobotomy.

Post reply on HN