Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets • Hacker News Board

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#31

Post by Buttons840 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

> “Because (children) are not developmentally ready to handle [porn], it leads to the problems of depression, anxiety and all the problems that go with that including and up to its most extreme form, suicide ideation and attempts,” Gibson said.

Is this true? I have a young child and have a hard time imagining she would view porn as anything other than strange or bad being done by other people. I don't think she would take it personally, and of course, I'm not going to test it out. TV regularly depicts violent murders of innocent people, yet I don't hear claims of that leading to suicide.

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#32

Post by reissbaker » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #4

anm89 wrote: post #2

Does Utah actually have that much market power? Could manufacturers just stop selling to Utah?

I mean... yes? Just pre-installing/enabling some parental control filter on phones is way cheaper than even losing out on a few millions worth of sales. It's pretty trivial to do since those filters already exist. It will probably end with retailers having to do that at the time of sale, but still, it's perfectly possible.

Doing that when building these devices at scale and handling support queries for it is probably not cheap. Most phone manufacturers don't allow retailers to tamper with the software on the phones/tablets (that opens up a can of worms in terms of security), so they'd have to do it very early, maybe even at the factory — which means earmarking which devices are bound to Utah. Responsible manufacturers (e.g. Apple) would also have to audit the filter code, or build it themselves.

It gets even worse for Utah, though. The bill demands that any device activated in Utah comply with the law — not merely sold in Utah. So manufacturers would need to turn on location tracking and make it impossible to disable, for all users in the world, just to detect the corner case that they happen to be in Utah, so that they can silently turn on a Utah-specific porn filter.

I doubt the bill will pass, but if it does, I doubt many manufacturers would comply.

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#33

Post by Threeve303 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

Is there a legal precedent already where a state forced a private company to include specific software on a device?

The Microsoft breakup in the late 90s might be one example but even that was not about setting specific kinds of software as the default, just letting users choose the default.

Looking down the line at state or federal mandates for this kind of stuff, it's easy to see it venture into backdoor encryption territory. If they can mandate porn filters for safety reasons then why not expand that concept to encryption?

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#34

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

Let’s compare these sets of people:

1. who reacts most strongly to this story about deplatforming porn

2. who reacts most strongly to stories about deplatforming hate speech and incitement

And try to figure out if the two groups have different principles about free expression, or perhaps the principles are irrelevant and only function as justifications when convenient for some kind of tribalism.

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#35

Post by darkwizard42 » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #23

I understand the HN crowd may take issue with this, but the ease at which a child can stumble onto pornography or adult content is really scary. Even with google safe search, etc enabled. Growing up watching television in the US, you couldn't see topless women on public broadcast TV, let alone hardcore pornography.

Yes, sure, I understand the concern of having children be protected from things they aren't ready for...

...but is the government mandating this the best way to go about it? Is this implementation even sound?

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#36

Post by foolfoolz » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #9

I thought Utah was a GOP state? What happened to 'small government'? This seems like shoving gov't down your throat.

the old saying is republicans won’t stay out of your bedroom, democrats won’t stay out of your wallet

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#37

Post by Pet_Ant » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #23

I understand the HN crowd may take issue with this, but the ease at which a child can stumble onto pornography or adult content is really scary. Even with google safe search, etc enabled. Growing up watching television in the US, you couldn't see topless women on public broadcast TV, let alone hardcore pornography.

...because in most of the rest of the world you could and the internet made the world flat. Don't worry, if the last couple of years are anything to go by they fared much better.

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#38

Post by psychometry » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

I know Salt Lake City has been trying to make itself into a destination for tech companies recently. Wonder how this fits into that plan?

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#39

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #34

Let’s compare these sets of people: 1. who reacts most strongly to this story about deplatforming porn 2. who reacts most strongly to stories about deplatforming hate speech and incitement And try to figure out if the two groups have different principles about free expression, or perhaps the principles are irrelevant and only function as justifications when convenient for some kind of tribalism.

Government deplatforming and private industry deplatforming are vastly different things, especially at a Constitutional level.

Re: Utah bill would require activated porn filter software on new phones, tablets

#40

Post by AmericanChopper » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #9

I thought Utah was a GOP state? What happened to 'small government'? This seems like shoving gov't down your throat.

Many Republican voters would also like to know the answer to this question.

Edit: If your point is that many Republican policies don’t represent the supposed political ideals of Republicans, then you don’t have to look very hard to find out this is a very popular complaint amongst Republican voters.