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

ellsberg.substack.com

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

#121

Post by [deleted] »

danaris wrote: post #96
al_borland wrote: post #10

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…

> 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. But there won't be. Because the ultimate purpose of laws like this isn't really to prevent minors from accessing porn. Ultimately, it's to 1) outlaw porn for everyone , because it's "sinful", and 2) outlaw disc…

[deleted]

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

#122

Post by kurthr »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #73
perihelions wrote: post #25

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]

I think that's the point of the article. The Supreme Court has Ruled:

   "prosecutors in Tennessee and South Dakota can even reach across state lines
   and prosecute writers on FELONY charges for a single paragraph of sexually-
   explicit writing on my site that they think "harmed" kids in their states,
   facing up to FIFTEEN years in prison, for failing to implement ID-checks on 
   my dinky little free WordPress site."

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

#123

Post by chgs »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #97
_Algernon_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental problem—and it's a big one—is that in the physical world, age verification does not result in a centralized log of when and where I was, and what I did. If I buy cigarettes I show my paper id to some dude and then buy smokes. It's transient with no record (except the fallible memory of the bloke doing the ID check). This is not true for the proposed age verification schemes for the internet and that i…

[flagged]

We can’t do it because our priority as an industry is to get data to monetise. Anonymity is a bug, not a feature.

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

#124

Post by trhway »

antonymoose wrote: post #112
Sharlin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I expect a liquor store to check ID, why not a porn store?

Interesting, why did you give up your right to buy liquor anonymously? And you also seem to be willing to give up your right to anonymous porn. Why?

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

#125

Post by raffael_de »

CPLX wrote: post #79
soulofmischief wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes against the very ethos of the early web. We should not be normalizing any form of this extreme moral overreach.

How did widespread adoption of the libertarian techno-utopianism of the early web work out for society as a whole?

not at all? because it didn't even get to a point where it could have worked out for society as a whole?

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

#126

Post by baq »

everdrive wrote: post #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.

I’d rather have this regulated properly before cloudflare becomes the defacto standard of id checks.

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

#127

Post by chgs »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #103
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Age verification is easy. Age verification that leaves no record, is anonymous, and not circumvent-able is difficult. In the physical world it relies on the fallibility of human memory. No such luck with replicated databases.

Site generates random key

Key and verification passed to verifier

Verified list is published

Site pulls list and checks its number has been verified

Site doesn’t know who it is, and verifier doesn’t know which site was verified against

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

#128

Post by rdm_blackhole »

olddustytrail wrote: post #49
gxs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please, the EU is trying to ban encryption at this very moment, to say the that EU is pro privacy is a bit of a joke really.

Privacy from companies maybe, privacy from governments and cops, certainly not.

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

#129

Post by baq »

nikanj wrote: post #82
everdrive wrote: post #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.

And honestly, with the advent of AI spam everywhere, I'd be quite happy to visit a version of the internet where everyone is a certified real person

No idea why you’re getting downvoted when there’s a slow but unstoppable migration of everything into discord or other walled, somewhat LLM-proof gardens.

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

#130

Post by ronsor »

kfajdsl wrote: post #109
root_axis wrote: post #17

> In fact, under the laws that the Supreme Court just upheld, prosecutors in Tennessee and South Dakota can even reach across state lines and prosecute writers on FELONY charges for a single paragraph of sexually-explicit writing on my site that they think "harmed" kids in their states, facing up to FIFTEEN years in prison, for failing to implement ID-checks on my dinky little free WordPress site. > It's unlikely the…

If an state AG tries to prosecute an entity that has no ties to the state other than content being passively accessible, that's probably another supreme court case if it doesn't get immediately decided in favor of the defendant in the lower courts. You open a big can of worms if entities are required to proactively comply with regulations in states they have zero presence in. If Texas wants to block content from enti…

Isn't this covered by the "full faith and credit" clause? [0]

[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S1-1/AL...

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