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

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

#701

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…

By a similar argument, why should stores check id's when selling alcohol or cigarettes? Raising kids is not their job either. The answer is because we live in a society. Society is about families, not just adults. Sure, raising kids is primarily the job of the parents, but everyone helps. Sometimes that results in a bit of inconvenience for businesses. Excluding kids from businesses that are adult-only isn't very kid…

And educating the kids should be, and always has been a collective effort. Even in pre-industrial societies it was true. In the modern world it should be doubly true. I think most people would agree that we need public schools, even though some of them disagree with how sex ed and evolution were taught there.

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

#702
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree, at least as far as legal obligation goes. The average voter is far more worried about porn and other explicit content and not so much about anything else.

This doesn't really track with widespread and normalized use of pornographic materials, including written descriptions, by most adults in this country. There's a pretty wide gulf between "I don't think kids should be able to access this stuff" and "I think we need to supercharge the surveillance state and destroy the first amendment"

This doesn't destroy the first amendment any more than requiring an ID & background check to purchase a firearm destroys the second amendment. Which is to say that it might, but for exactly the same reason, so The People ultimately need to decide on a consistent choice of interpretation.

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

#703
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically anything is possible with the Calvinball Supreme Court, but states can choose not to extradite their citizens. E.g. NY has a shield law for abortion doctors. https://ag.ny.gov/resources/organizations/police-departments...

This feels helpful, but puts a big burden on the person targeted. I live in California; let's say I run afoul of this Tennessee law and am criminally prosecuted. California decides this is bullshit and won't extradite me to Tennessee. Great. The article mentions that 20-odd states are implementing similar laws (though most offer only civil penalties, not criminal). Let's say I want to visit friends in New York. I get…

That would be one wild case if it did happen. Sucks for whoever it happens to, but that would 100% turn into a high profile case that puts the 10th amendment into question.

To be honest, it would be settled relatively quickly because I don't think any state wants to be the one to set such precedent as of now.

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

#704
post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an "I believe..." / "Do you believe..." kind of issue though. This is "Will the American State and Federal government impose an increasingly stringent moral compass on the wider internet, over time" Which... the VISA-Mastercard duopoly, backed by American soft power and with an American moral compass, already rather proves that point for anyone that's ever tried to pay for erotica outside the mainstream

Let’s be clear about what you mean when you say “outside the mainstream”, because that innocuous turn of phrase is doing a lot of work to cover what you’re really saying. Visa and MasterCard disallow content depicting CSA, rape, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, scatological erotica, torture, extreme sexual violence, and revenge porn.

Equivocating child sexual abuse with the dude drawing consentual fan-fic or furry porn feels disingenuous at best, and more like bad faith though.

Because you're not wrong, the mainstream is fairly narrow, but to say the credit card duopoly excludes only the most heinous and vile imagery that can only barely be covered under "artistic expression" isn't exactly an entirely accurate depiction of reality.

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

#705
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to add Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, etc to that list to actually achieve what you set out to accomplish. Which then does more harm than what you’re trying to prevent. He’ll realistically the US doesn’t make the cut either.

Why? Concretely, what would I be trying to allow in Japan? Don't they mostly communicate in Japanese anyway? The US has things like local government, schools, businesses, clubs, organizations, etc. Because the US is where we live. That makes it inconvenient to default block the US. Australia has what that is relevant to us? I don't see any .au in my browser history. Or .jp. Or .ca. There is some ac.uk, granted, but t…

[deleted]

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

#706

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…

> Parents are expecting the government, and random websites, to raise their kids.

(1) Without addressing the general statement, specifically this isn't new. You’ve historically not been allowed to buy pornography or cigarettes or alcohol without age verification or watch obscene content between the nightly news runs. I don't see this specifically as parents wanting the government to raise their kids at all. It’s people without any other real options wanting to make it more difficult for inappropriate material to end up in the hands of minors. When I was 12 I remember getting online with AOL discs and having popups with porn appear in front of me as I’m playing neopets, because some unsavory ad got accidentally “clicked” many sessions ago. How can a parent “parent” that?

> If these laws move forward (and I don’t think they should)

(2) These laws already exist, the internet was a loophole. If it’s done right you verify your age when you make your account and the site doesn’t bug you again. Not sure how frequently you’re visiting new porn sites, but I can’t imagine getting over prompted would be a real problem.

(3) There is a concept of using ZKPs to do more things client side. However I think currently people are more excited about selective disclosure. You just give the site a signed claim that you’re over 18 and that’s all they know. It’s more private than handing over your DL at the grocery store checkout.

> People should also be able to set their browser/computer to auto-send this for single-user devices, where it is all transparent to the user.

They should, shouldn’t they. But some privacy nut out there will say we can’t have nice things because an advertiser might use it to profile you.

Really though one aspect of digital identity is presence and liveliness checking. The states that issue your ID to Apple Wallet are only willing to do so because Apple ensures that the user presence is verified at time of use.

The question isn’t why should you have to jump through hoops, it’s why should we enforce age restrictions in person but not in the internet—why haven't you had to jump through all the existing hoops to watch internet porn until now?

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

#707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like this? https://webkit.org/blog/16993/news-from-wwdc25-web-technolog... It’s a W3C spec led by Okta, Apple and Google based on an ISO standard and it is being rolled out as we speak. This part other iOS applications that have registered themselves as an Identity Document Provider. Has some fun history: California went with an independent contractor for its mDL implementation, which ultimately pressured Ap…

This is interesting, but I’d like to go a step further. I watched the first quarter of the video on where they go over how it works. The site requests data from your ID and they get that data. The site chooses which data it needs and if it will store it or it or not. Sites these days have a tendency to ask for more than what they need, and to store it for profiling purposes. The user can deny the request, but then ca…

Zero knowledge proofs are the solution.

The website sends the verification function to the user device. The user device then returns a proof that it knows an input that the verification function accepts.

The verification function should include a digital signature check.

This is generally possible already with SSI based credentials, including standards created by W3C.

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

#708
post #702
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really track with widespread and normalized use of pornographic materials, including written descriptions, by most adults in this country. There's a pretty wide gulf between "I don't think kids should be able to access this stuff" and "I think we need to supercharge the surveillance state and destroy the first amendment"

This doesn't destroy the first amendment any more than requiring an ID & background check to purchase a firearm destroys the second amendment. Which is to say that it might, but for exactly the same reason, so The People ultimately need to decide on a consistent choice of interpretation.

Except one person googling and watching porn has nothing to do with other people, very different from buying guns

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

#709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spec is being implemented by Apple, who is sensitive to privacy issues. The intent of the ISO spec is to allow you to request fine-grained data, like birth year only, but if you read the W3C standard, they explicitly call out privacy as a complex thing that maybe should be regulated. The spec spells out the complexity: some ID verification processes actually need a lot of info! But some, like an alcohol age check…

> The intent of the ISO spec is to allow you to request fine-grained data, like birth year only, but if you read the W3C standard, they explicitly call out privacy as a complex thing that maybe should be regulated. Aren't the regulations the problem here? If not for that nobody would be getting pressured to divulge this personal information to every shady app and website in the first place. Suppose I want to make a s…

Are you arguing that we should not regulate porn, alcohol, and cigarettes? Or that we shouldn’t have digital ways to do the regulating we’ve been doing for decades?

If the discussion was a question of whether to regulate or not, I’d see more where you’re coming from. But the discussion is about how to effectively respond to the enforcement of existing laws now against websites. Society has grown up and we’re not comfortable giving the internet a pass because digital identity is hard.

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

#710
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you're experiencing a bunch of downvotes over a counterpoint from your own experience. Even though I could predict what side HN would stand on any sort of internet freedom post, reading through all the reasonable yet greyed-out comments in this thread feels like HN's last dying breath as a place for genuine debate.

The replies here are disturbing for their lack of concern or even awareness of the fact that some parents have, you know, economic pressures? Like they have to work long hours or multiple jobs? Both parents have to work? This site can be really gross sometimes. I want to think it's just that the site skews young and people just don't know. I might have said similar things when I was 20.

You’re not arguing it well. There are effective free tools; not expensive ones like you claim. You’re worried about regulation when the Supreme Court is supporting this burdensome patchwork that’ll outlive its usefulness because it’s politically difficult to repeal. And yes somewhere there is an unsupervised kid whose parents are overwhelmed by other pressures, but of all the risks to that kid, if porn is #1 then we’re talking upper middle class or higher.
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